Intro to Android Development
  • Welcome
  • Syllabus
  • Hack Challenge
  • Resources
    • Lecture Videos
    • Ed Discussion
    • Git & GitHub Help/How-To
    • Setting up Android Studio
    • Starting an Android Studio Project & Making an Emulator
    • Importing, Exporting, & Submitting Your Projects to CMS
  • SP25 Course Material
    • Week 1 | Course Logistics, Kotlin, & Basic UI
      • Relevant Links
      • Demo/Lecture: Eatery Card
      • A0: Eatery Card (Follow-Along)
    • Week 2 | States, Components, LazyColumn
      • Relevant Links
      • Demo: Todo List
      • A2: Shopping List
    • Week 3 | Navigation & Animations
      • Relevant Links
      • Demo: Onboarding
      • A3: Stock Trading (RobbingGood)
    • Week 4 | MVVM and Flows
      • Relevant Links
      • Demo: Eatery Card 2
      • A4: Chat of a Lifetime
    • Week 5 | Dumb Components & UIEvents
      • Relevant Links
      • Demo: Music Player
      • A5: Rate My Vibe
    • Week 6 | Coroutines, Networking, JSON
      • Relevant Links
      • Demo: Retrofit
      • A6: You Should Even Lift, Bro.
  • Bonus Week | Android Job Search
    • Relevant Links
    • Android Technical Interview Question!
  • Textbook
    • 1. Introduction to the Editor and Views
      • 1.1 Introduction to the Editor
      • 1.2 SDK Management
      • 1.3 Kotlin Overview
      • 1.4 Views
      • 1.5 Android Studio Project Demo + Understanding The Editor
    • 2. Jetpack Compose
      • 2.1 Introduction
      • 2.2 Layouts
      • 2.3 Modifiers
      • 2.4 Animations
      • 2.5 Lazy Lists
      • 2.6 Reactive UI
    • 3. Intents and Manifest
      • 3.1 Activities
      • 3.2 Implicit Intents
      • 3.3 Explicit Intents
      • 3.4 Manifest
      • 3.5 Permissions
      • 3.6 Summary
    • 4. Navigation
      • 4.1 Types of Navigation
      • 4.2 Implementation of the Bottom Navigation Bar
    • 5. Data and Persistent Storage
      • 5.1 Singleton Classes
      • 5.2 Shared Preferences
      • 5.3 Rooms
      • 5.4 Entities
      • 5.5 Data Access Objects
      • 5.6 Databases
    • 5.5 Concurrency
      • 5.5.1 Coroutines
      • 5.5.2 Implementation of Coroutines
      • 5.5.3 Coroutines with Networking Calls
    • 6. Networking and 3rd Party libraries
      • 6.1 HTTP Overview
      • 6.2 3rd Party Libraries
      • 6.3 JSON and Moshi
      • 6.4 Retrofit
      • 6.5 Summary
    • 7. MVVM Design Pattern
      • 7.1 Key Idea
      • 7.2 Implementation Ideas
    • 8. Flows
    • 9. The Art and Ontology of Software
    • 10. 🔥 Firebase
      • 10.1 Setting up Firebase
      • 10.2 Authentication
      • 10.3 Analytics
      • 10.4 Messaging
      • 10.5 Firestore
  • Additional Topics
    • Git and GitHub
    • Exporting to APK
  • Archive
    • Archived Native Android Textbook Pages
      • 1. Layouts and More Views
        • 1.1 File Structure and File Types
        • 1.2 Resource Files
        • 1.3 Button and Input Control
        • 1.4 ViewGroups
        • 1.5 Summary + A Note On Chapter 2 Topics
      • 2. RecyclerViews
        • 2.1 RecyclerViews
        • 2.2 RecyclerView Performance
        • 2.3 Implementation of a Recycler View
        • 2.4 Implementation with Input Controls
        • 2.5 Filtering RecyclerViews
        • 2.6 Recyclerview Demo
      • 3. ListViews and Searching
        • 3.1 ListView vs. RecyclerView
        • 3.2 ListView Performance
        • 3.3 Implementation of a ListView
        • 3.4 Searching in a List View
      • 4. Fragments
        • 4.1 What are Fragments?
        • 4.2 Lifecycle of a Fragment
        • 4.3 Integrating a Fragment into an Activity
        • 4.4 Sharing Data Between Fragments
        • 4.5 Fragment Slide Shows
      • 5. OkHttp
      • 6. Activity Lifecycle
      • 7. Implementation of Tab Layout
    • Fall 2024 Course Material
      • Lecture 1 & Exercise 1: Introduction to Android
      • Lecture 1.5: Beauty of Kotlin
      • Lecture 2 & HW 2: Modifiers, Lazylists and Reactive UI
      • Lecture 3 & HW 3: Animations, Intents and Manifest
      • Lecture 4 & HW 4: Coroutines & Navigation
      • Lecture 5 & HW 5: Persistent Storage, Networking, and JSON Parsing
      • Lecture 6 & HW 6: MVVM, Flows
      • Bonus Lectures & Bonus HW
      • Bonus Lecture: Industry Practice
    • Spring 2024 Course Material
      • Lecture 1 & Exercise 1: Introduction to Android
      • Lecture 4 & HW 4: LazyLists
      • Lecture 6 & HW 6: Networking, Data, and Persistent Storage
    • Spring 2020 Course Material
      • Week 1: Intro to the Editor
      • Week 2: Views and Layouts
      • Week 3: Intent and Manifest
      • Week 4: ListView and RecyclerView
      • Week 5: Fragments
      • Week 6: Networking
    • Spring 2021 Lecture & HW 8: Networking & 3rd Party APIs
    • HackOurCampus Workshop
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  1. Archive
  2. Archived Native Android Textbook Pages
  3. 1. Layouts and More Views

1.2 Resource Files

Before ending the chapter, we ought to understand some of the other files laying around in the res folder. These are the resource files of our project, and Android resource files are split into these sub-categories:

  1. Drawable contains images and icons for app in the phone’s home screen.

  2. Font contains custom font files

  3. Layout contains XML files for all the layouts in the project

  4. Mipmap contains icon images

  5. Raw contains audio and video media

  6. Values contains reusable values for colors, dimens, strings, and styles

For the most part, these resource files will remain empty until you start populating them with information, and it is generally good practice to move resources into the resource file if that resource going to be used multiple times. Along the same line, it’s good practice to move commonly used values into the resource files so that if the design of the app changes, you won’t have to go through every XML and class file to change the values.

For example, in order to avoid having to remember specific color codes, you can specify them in the colors.xml file. Now the color can be referenced by its string name.

colors.xml
<resources>
  <color name="colorPrimary">#008577</color>
  <color name="colorPrimaryDark">#00574B</color>
  <color name="colorAccent">#D81B60</color>
</resources>

You would refer to the colors in the XML file like so:

android:background="@color/colorPrimary"

This way, if the designer decides to change up the color scheme of the app, you would only have to change three values.

Previous1.1 File Structure and File TypesNext1.3 Button and Input Control

Last updated 7 months ago

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