Question

Consider the Widgets you've been reading about in this week's reading assignment. Choose 10 Widgets and describe two scenarios of how they can be used in an Android app.

For example, TextView can be used as an entry field to enter username and password. It is important that users can identify themselves in an app. TextView allows us to capture words and forward them to a network application.

Answer 1

EditText : EditText in android is a sub class of TextView, It is mainly used to edit the text which was already give like passwords and emails, And It is also used as a normal Textview which is useful to provide an input or text field, especially in forms

Buttons: Button is a user interface widget which is used to perform an action whenever the user click or tap on it, These will contain mainly text and icons, Buttons with text like submit, login, register are used for submitting forms, where as buttons with icons are used to redirect to some other webpage or same page, ImageButtons representing icons, RadioButtons are for optional choosing purposes, ToggleButtons are for on and off situations.

CheckBox: CheckBox is a two states button that can be either checked or unchecked, It will allow users to toggle between the two states based on the requirements, It is mainly used for choosing set of attributes by ticking that attribute, those may be skillset or subjects interested etc. It is also used for displaying the respective data of option when clicked.

ProgressBar: ProgressBar is a user interface widget used to indicate the progress of an operation. Generally It is a basic loading animation(spinning wheel) which will take place after clicking submit and before receiving response, And also for loading any images, webpages etc. It is used in many situations while uploading the data or downloading the data.

Spinner: Spinner is a widget which allow a user to select one value from the list of values. The spinner in android will behave same like dropdown list in web technologies. Android Spinners are used to select a distinct value from a dropdown. They also can be used to select a multiple values.

Switch: Switch is a two-state widget which is used to display ON or OFF states as a button with slider which can be slided using finger or thumb. By using finger, the user may drag back and forth to choose an option either ON or OFF.  It is mainly used for on and off cases in a mobile app, to on or off mobile data, hotspot, wifi etc. In some applications it is also can be used to hide or unhide the data.

AlertDialog: AlertDialog is used to prompt a dialog to the user with message and buttons to perform an action to proceed further. It is used at the time of submitting the forms, and deleting or updating the details by prompting message like are you sure with yes and no buttons, and also used when leaving any website or closing any application by prompting the same are you sure with yes and no buttons.

AutoCompleteTextView: AutoCompleteTextView is an editable text view which is used to show the list of suggestions based on the user typing text. The list of suggestions will be shown as a dropdown menu from which the user can choose replacing the content of the text box, It can be used while filling the forms and also while searching anything from the text.

ImageSwitcher: Image Switcher is a special view switcher which will provide a smooth transition animation effect to the images while switching from one image to another, it can be used to auto switch the images alternatively or randomly, and also by sliding.