Laying Out the User Interface

By default, Eclipse opened activity_quiz.xml in Android’s graphical layout tool, which shows you a preview of the layout. The graphical layout tool can be useful, but for now you are going to work in XML to get a better understanding of how layouts work.

To get to the raw XML, select the tab at the bottom of the editor labeled activity_quiz.xml.

Currently, activity_quiz.xml defines the default activity layout. The defaults change frequently, but the XML will look something like Listing 1.1.

Listing 1.1  Default activity layout (activity_quiz.xml)

<​R​e​l​a​t​i​v​e​L​a​y​o​u​t​ ​x​m​l​n​s​:​a​n​d​r​o​i​d​=​"​h​t​t​p​:​/​/​s​c​h​e​m​a​s​.​a​n​d​r​o​i​d​.​c​o​m​/​a​p​k​/​r​e​s​/​a​n​d​r​o​i​d​"​ ​ ​x​m​l​n​s​:​t​o​o​l​s​=​"​h​t​t​p​:​/​/​s​c​h​e​m​a​s​.​a​n​d​r​o​i​d​.​c​o​m​/​t​o​o​l​s​"​ ...

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