16.6 Summary
Each element within a user interface screen of an Android application is a view that is ultimately subclassed from the android.view.View class. Each view represents a rectangular area of the device display and is responsible both for what appears in that rectangle and for handling events that take place within the view’s bounds. Multiple views may be combined to create a single composite view. The views within a composite view are children of a container view which is generally a subclass of android.view.ViewGroup (which is itself a subclass of android.view.View). A user interface is comprised of views constructed in the form of a view hierarchy.
The Android SDK includes a range of pre-built views that can be used to create a user interface. These include basic components such as text fields and buttons, in addition to a range of layout managers that can be used to control the positioning of child views. In the event that the supplied views do not meet a specific...