Whats a GUI design app without being able to place widgets around and play with them?
First, some things you should know:
1. Android GUI Basics - I highly recommend you read this before using this app. Knowing the basics of Android GUI design will help you get up to speed and remove all confusion as to how this app functions.
Hint: This app is by the book when it comes to the laws of Android!
2. Widget Naming - When you add a widget, it is named automatically for you. Thats the name you'll be using in the code in the SDK later! Layout names have no effect on their visuals, they are only there for future reference.
In Gui2Go, you have 3 ways of placing new widgets:
1. Point & Click - This is quite simple!
- - Select the widget you want from the toolbox
- - Select the target layout in your editing area (or none if you want to add to the root layout)
- - Press the big plus icon in the bottom area of the toolbox!
Voila, widget added!
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2. Drag & Drop - Also simple!
Just long press on a target widget in the toolbox, then drag it over to the target layout.
You can't miss because target layouts are always highlighted in green as you pass over them.
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3. Radial Menu - Ahh this is my favorite... why it's the awesome and quick radial menu!
To use it, touch the menu icon to open up the menu. While your finger is pressed and the menu is open, move it to one of the widgets. You will now start dragging that widget.
Now just drop the widget over the target layout and you've got it!
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Editing widgets:
Every widget or layout can be freely edited.
There are two ways to do this:
1. Select the widget and press the correct button on the Action Bar.
2. Long click the widget you want to edit, and pick an option from the Context Menu
Possible actions:
- Delete
- Rename
- Toggle fill width/height
- Change size
- Change text/image
- Set margins
- And more...
Note: You can also select widgets from the tree view.
Whats the Tree View you ask? Well....
The Tree View:
This awesome View is a custom view created by Jarek from Polidea - http://www.polidea.pl/en/
I took it and customized it a bit so it would fit my needs.
The tree shows your View Hierarchy. This allows you to easily see which view belongs to which parent, and also control their order.
Besides being a great information source, the tree view allows you to drag views in two ways to modify them.
Dragging a view to another layout will move it under that layout.
Dragging a view to the trash can will delete it (and it's children).
Note: Due to a limitation in the Android system, currently you must use the tree to select container widgets such as the ListView or Spinner. I'm working on a fix so don't worry!
