Android Application Development Tutorial - 162 - Basic Widget Design Video

what's up guys welcome your 160 second
Android tutorial for the new Boston and
now that we've defined both of our
receiver which is our actual widget and
the activity that's gonna basically
configure our widget we can get into the
design and the development of our widget
so just make sure you save the manifest
close that and we're still gonna work
with this you know this XML file which
is our app widget provider but first
before we do that we need to set up a
layout of what we want within our widget
so again we're just gonna set up a new
Android XML file it's gonna be a layout
and I'll tell you what you can add to
the widgets there's certain things you
can add with in there and certain things
you can't we'll get to that in a second
and what we're gonna do is we're going
to just call this widget yeah that
sounds good widget XML hit finish and we
also want to set up a layout for
configure class so we're also going to
say a new XML file as well call this
widget config dot XML again a layout and
finish
so first let's develop our configure XML
file all we're gonna have is an edit
text and a button so text fields drop in
and edit text and also drop in a button
I like this new version of the ADT where
you can your size it like that but what
we're going to do is we're going to
switch over and just make sure we have a
references the same so we're just gonna
have our button be widget button widget
config and we're gonna have our edit
text also just be ET widget config
there we go we have our layout for a
widget configure class setup and we also
need to set up our actual widget so this
is the widget XML file all we're gonna
have is one Tek textview a button and
another textview so again nothing too
complicated just make sure we ever we
have our references set the same so
we're gonna call this one TV config
input and we're also going to have our
button just be widget button widget open
because this one's going to open an
activity and for a third textview we're
gonna say TV widget update so there we
go we basically have our widget
configure and this is what's gonna
appear when we add this widget to the
home screen of the person's phone so
it's pretty simple again it's pretty
pointless I should say and we have that
set up so now what we're gonna do is
we're going to go back over to this
widget stuff XML so within this file we
set up the configuration already of what
activity we want it to open when we add
it to the home screen but we also need
to set up how you know how big we want
the widget to be and how often we want
it to update and also initial layout so
first we're just going to do our initial
layout that we set up so we're just
going to go browse and then it's under
layouts and we called that one one
widget so we're just gonna hit widget at
layout widget and then what we're gonna
do is we're gonna set up the width and
the height and there's certain
guidelines for for the width and the
height so we're going to jump over to
the developer page which I'm sure you
can just google widget design guidelines
and it'll pop this page up otherwise you
can pause the video and go to this
website if you want to type it in and
you know this give us this gives us a
little bit more information about the
guidelines of how to set up a widget and
all we're gonna do is we're going to
scroll down to where it says standard
widget sizes so like we can see like the
320
by 100 there's gonna be length of pretty
much four of those that you can fit on
the screen and you know different sizes
that you can use there's guidelines and
I believe there's some kind of formula I
don't know if it's on this page or not
but there's a formula to figure out if
you want a different size in this how
you do that so you guys might want to
look on this page to figure that out
we're just gonna follow this guideline
of 320 by 100 so again we're just gonna
jump into the clips and for a width we
want to say 300 or 320 by 100 and this
is DP or both and then lastly we want to
tell our widget how often to update and
the minimum value that we can tell it's
update is every half an hour because you
know every time we call that update
through the broadcast receiver it's
gonna use battery power and it's gonna
you know kill the person's phone real
quickly so they want to keep it to a
restriction of 30 minutes when you call
that update so just keep that in mind
we're actually gonna do 30 minutes just
so you guys can kind of see what it does
after time overtime if you guys you know
put this widget on your phone then you
can delete it because it's pretty much
pointless and just waste your battery
power but for 330 minutes we're gonna
say 180,000 seconds or milliseconds oh
wait is that right now there we go
so 1.8 million milliseconds is equal to
30 minutes I believe we can do more than
that obviously if we want this widget to
update daily or something like that but
just for example we're gonna have it be
30 minutes and that's pretty much it we
set up our widget provider and that's
just gonna kind of again define the
shape of our widget how often we want to
update what the layout of the widget
should be and you know if we have a
configure you don't have to have a
configuration activity but if you choose
to you can set that up as well which
we're going to do just for examples sake
and that's pretty much it for this
tutorial hopefully you understand a
little bit more about the app widget
provider and make sure you check out
this page to kind of get a little bit
better overview of some of the stuff
that you can do when developing your
widget
and you know just how to design it well
obviously the way we're designing it
it's not that great but you can go into
more detail there so I'll catch you guys
in the next tutorial and hope you have a
good one
see you later