

Ask HN: How do I convert a PSD design to Android xml? - dawilster

Hi everyone,<p>I've been toying with android apps the past couple of days and cannot seem to get my head around the entire UI and layout development.<p>I've been programming in Java for the past year so I'm fairly familiar with the language and I've been front end developing in CSS for a couple years now but I can seem to make the transition.<p>If anybody could point me towards some online resources that would be great.<p>Thanks a lot
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georgemcbay
This is the best place to start:

[http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/declaring-
layou...](http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/declaring-layout.html)

Generally speaking, though, your question seems to imply that you expect the
conversion process to be fairly direct, splitting up the image into little
page sprites as is often done with web pages. That's not at all an ideal way
to try to implement an Android UI.

Unless you want to take the easy way out and make this a native app that wraps
a WebView and do all the layout in HTML you're going to have to spend quite a
bit of time reading about Android layouts, the Android resource system and
Android styles, all of which are quite different than HTML/CSS. Everything you
need to know is on that Android site, and be sure to look through the SDK
examples as well.

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dawilster
Thanks! I will.

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lutusp
AFAIK and as an Android developer, I don't think there's a way around the need
to hand-edit the XML files that lie behind the Android GUI layout. It's pretty
labor-intensive and I don't think there are any shortcuts.

There are plenty of gotchas in Android development, but on the other hand,
there are plenty of ways to get assistance online, primarily by doing research
and looking at other people's code.

~~~
dawilster
Hey,

Thanks for the reply, I gave the wrong idea with the word convert I mean't
manually code but I can't seem to find many online resources that go into
detail about going from a photoshop design to a coded user interface.

