38.1 Understanding Navigation

Every app has a home screen that appears after the app has launched and after any splash screen has appeared (a splash screen being the app branding screen that appears temporarily while the app loads). From this home screen, the user will typically perform tasks that will result in other screens appearing. These screens will usually take the form of other activities and fragments within the app. A messaging app, for example, might have a home screen listing current messages from which the user can navigate to either another screen to access a contact list or to a settings screen. The contacts list screen, in turn, might allow the user to navigate to other screens where new users can be added or existing contacts updated. Graphically, the app’s navigation graph might be represented as shown in Figure 38-1:

Figure 38-1

Each screen that makes up an app, including the home screen, is referred to as a destination and is usually a fragment...