Android Application Development Tutorial - 84 - Tabs setup with TabHost

what's up guys welcome to your 84th
Android tutorial for the new boss in
we're going to do in this tutorials
again set up just kind of a small
application that deals with tabs
something like this is our desired
result but for this tutorial we're just
going to set up the XML layout so I want
you guys created tabs class or class
called tabs and then also a Android XML
file called tabs as well lower cased for
our layout and then once we go into our
layout what we're going to do is we're
going to go over here into our composite
and there's something called a tab host
that's what we're going to drag and drop
into our project here and again we get
kind of an error because they haven't
really updated the SDK or the ADT I
should say yet for the 2.2 platform so a
quick fix that we can do to kind of get
a visual just like last time we had this
kind of error but we could have done
this last time to get a kind of a
visuals go up here to basically the way
that we're viewing it and we're going to
view it through with the honeycomb
platform or the 3.0 platform they'll
kind of give us a layout and it still
will work on an emulator once we have it
set up but or your phone or whatever
it's just the ADT for Android for
Eclipse I should say and then so we're
going to go up here and then we're going
to select Android 3.0 and this is kind
of desired result we have three tabs up
here and a view of some sort and if you
guys don't have this choice again that's
just from the window tab and then
Android SDK AVD manager go to available
packages Android repository and then
select a three point 3.0 platform and
install it pretty simple then you can
have that option right there so let's go
into it and see what it is important
here with the tab host and how it works
basically what we have is a firstly
we're just going to start with in the
smallest little brackets here we have a
frame layout and again the frame layout
allows us to draw on top of each other
so what we're going to do all first
let's just kind of describe our thing
frame layout it's going to hold our
three tabs or even more if you guys want
to put more tabs it has three linear
layouts right now none of those linear
lates have anything within them and we
also have a tab widget that kind of
holds that all we have this tabloid
right here which kind of aligns are all
of our tabs in in a row of some sort so
that's what that is and then we have a
linear layout here that kind of holds
everything together which is organized
by this this thing called a tab host so
the tab host basically controls
everything and organizes it and I'll
show you guys you'll learn more about
what tab houses and Java when we get
there but let's kind of set up this
these tabs that have something just so
we know what we're we're working with
here so we're going to go to the
graphical view we're going to say for
right here we're just going to lay out
two buttons and a textview nothing
awesome
for the most part mainly this tutorial
is getting about the tab so here we have
oops here we have the two buttons and
the textview that we laid out as you can
see that's within our first tab this
first linear layout so again let's just
copy cut this textview or copy this text
view flip post it within our second
linear layout just so we have something
there so we're gonna say textview -
something like that
or a text view - and then as well as for
a third application we're going to say
textview three just so we know there's
something different within each of those
tabs and oops I didn't put that one
within
the layout here so and now what's gonna
happen or first let's kind of set up
these buttons and then I'll show you
guys what problems were having when I
say start and stop for the two buttons
and button start watch and a stopwatch
because we're just going to build a
quick stopwatch application should take
only one one tutorial or so but we're
just going to suffer variables and we
aren't really going to worry about all
the other variables maybe this textview
will change that one as well
textview show results something like
that
and basically all the other IDs we
aren't going to really worry about but
it is pretty critical I guess we have
one more idea that we have to worry
about sorry but there is something that
that's pretty important here that we
want to make sure is is the same every
time you guys do a tab host type of deal
or if we are coding this all by
ourselves just like at the beginning of
the series where we would when you with
this tab widget right here you want the
ID to be this at Android ID forward
slash tabs it has to be that it's just
going to give us some kind of the basic
layout of the tabs when we go into Java
so you guys want to make sure that that
ID is referenced by the tabs and also
the frame layout as you can see here is
referenced by the tab content at Android
ID tab content and then for tab host
we're actually going to change this one
we're going to say at plus
that plus ID forward slash tab host
we're just going to leave it like that
instead of the Android ID tab host so
we're just again setting up our own
reference for the tab host and I'll
explain that all in Java but now what
I've done is I've just set the content
view to in our Java class so I set the
content view to this XML layout here I
just want to show you guys if we run the
application now it might not be what you
expect and the next tutorial will get it
running and setup basically what's
happening again the frame layout let's
just open it up as you can see we you
can kind of see this textview too right
here and also it's printed above our
start and stop right here so I mean
that's not exactly what we want
basically what's happening is that frame
layouts printing everything at once we
aren't even getting the tabs up here
nothing's really looking the way we want
it to but that's fine because everything
else that we're going to do is going to
be in Java and it's going to set up
everything the way that we want it to be
set up so I'll catch guys in the next
tutorial where we're going to do that
and have a good one peace