02Building a Simple User Interface

两小点：

1.ViewGroup

2.layout_weight属性

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Layouts are subclasses of the ViewGroup. In this exercise, you'll work with a LinearLayout.

所有的布局均是ViewGroup的子类。

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当我们输入下面的布局时：

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:orientation="horizontal" >
      <EditText android:id="@+id/edit_message"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:hint="edit_message" />
      <Button
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="send" />
</LinearLayout>

得到的运行结果如图：

这样的用户体验不好。

This works fine for the button, but not as well for the text field, because the user might type something longer. It would be nice to fill the unused screen width with the text field. You can do this inside a LinearLayout with theweight property, which you can specify using the android:layout_weight attribute.

The weight value is a number that specifies the amount of remaining space each view should consume, relative to the amount consumed by sibling views. This works kind of like the amount of ingredients in a drink recipe: "2 parts soda, 1 part syrup" means two-thirds of the drink is soda. For example, if you give one view a weight of 2 and another one a weight of 1, the sum is 3, so the first view fills 2/3 of the remaining space and the second view fills the rest. If you add a third view and give it a weight of 1, then the first view (with weight of 2) now gets 1/2 the remaining space, while the remaining two each get 1/4.

The default weight for all views is 0, so if you specify any weight value greater than 0 to only one view, then that view fills whatever space remains after all views are given the space they require.

To improve the layout efficiency when you specify the weight, you should change the width of the  EditText  to be zero (0dp). Setting the width to zero improves layout performance because using  "wrap_content"  as the width requires the system to calculate a width that is ultimately irrelevant because the weight value requires another width calculation to fill the remaining space.

wrap_content设置为0dp是为了提高性能的。

设置后的布局如下：

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:orientation="horizontal" >
      <EditText android:id="@+id/edit_message"
        android:layout_width="0dp"
        android:layout_weight="1"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:hint="edit_message" />
      <Button
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="send" />
</LinearLayout>