17.2 The Android Studio Layout Editor

As has been demonstrated in previous chapters, the Layout Editor tool provides a “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) environment in which views can be selected from a palette and then placed onto a canvas representing the display of an Android device. Once a view has been placed on the canvas, it can be moved, deleted and resized (subject to the constraints of the parent view). Further, a wide variety of properties relating to the selected view may be modified using the Attributes tool window.

Under the surface, the Layout Editor tool actually constructs an XML resource file containing the definition of the user interface that is being designed. As such, the Layout Editor tool operates in three distinct modes referred to as Design, Code and Split modes.