What are the differences between LinearLayout, RelativeLayout, and AbsoluteLayout?

Question

I am confused about the difference between LinearLayout, RelativeLayout, and AbsoluteLayout. Could someone please tell me the exact differences between them?

Teachin

Answer 1

LinearLayout means you can align views one by one (vertically/ horizontally).

RelativeLayout means based on relation of views from its parents and other views.

ConstraintLayout is similar to a RelativeLayout in that it uses relations to position and size widgets, but has additional flexibility and is easier to use in the Layout Editor.

WebView to load html, static or dynamic pages.

FrameLayout to load child one above another, like cards inside a frame, we can place one above another or anywhere inside the frame.

deprecated - AbsoluteLayout means you have to give exact position where the view should be.

For more information, please check this address https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/declaring-layout#CommonLayouts

Ethelyn

Check this link also dude.. mobiforge.com/designing/story/… – Ethelyn

Apparently AbsoluteLayout is deprecated for a reason; if the content doesn't fit, it randomly throws things around. You are better off with a LinearLayout and setting all of its paddings to 0. – Cataclinal

Answer 2

Definitions:

• Frame Layout: This is designed to block out an area on the screen to display a single item.
• Linear Layout: A layout that arranges its children in a single column or a single row.
• Relative Layout: This layout is a view group that displays child views in relative positions.
• Table Layout: A layout that arranges its children into rows and columns.

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More Information:

FrameLayout

FrameLayout is designed to block out an area on the screen to display a single item. Generally, FrameLayout should be used to hold a single child view, because it can be difficult to organize child views in a way that's scalable to different screen sizes without the children overlapping each other. You can, however, add multiple children to a FrameLayout and control their position within the FrameLayout by assigning gravity to each child, using the android:layout_gravity attribute.

Child views are drawn in a stack, with the most recently added child on top. The size of the FrameLayout is the size of its largest child (plus padding), visible or not (if the FrameLayout's parent permits).

RelativeLayout

A RelativeLayout is a very powerful utility for designing a user interface because it can eliminate nested view groups and keep your layout hierarchy flat, which improves performance. If you find yourself using several nested LinearLayout groups, you may be able to replace them with a single RelativeLayout.

(Current docs here)

TableLayout

A TableLayout consists of a number of TableRow objects, each defining a row (actually, you can have other children, which will be explained below). TableLayout containers do not display border lines for their rows, columns, or cells. Each row has zero or more cells; each cell can hold one View object. The table has as many columns as the row with the most cells. A table can leave cells empty. Cells can span columns, as they can in HTML.

The width of a column is defined by the row with the widest cell in that column.

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Note: Absolute Layout is deprecated.

Omasum

Answer 3

LinearLayout : A layout that organizes its children into a single horizontal or vertical row. It creates a scrollbar if the length of the window exceeds the length of the screen.It means you can align views one by one (vertically/ horizontally).

RelativeLayout : This enables you to specify the location of child objects relative to each other (child A to the left of child B) or to the parent (aligned to the top of the parent). It is based on relation of views from its parents and other views.

WebView : to load html, static or dynamic pages.

For more information refer this link:http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/layout-objects.html

Benisch

Answer 4

LinearLayout - In LinearLayout, views are organized either in vertical or horizontal orientation.

RelativeLayout - RelativeLayout is way more complex than LinearLayout, hence provides much more functionalities. Views are placed, as the name suggests, relative to each other.

FrameLayout - It behaves as a single object and its child views are overlapped over each other. FrameLayout takes the size of as per the biggest child element.

Coordinator Layout - This is the most powerful ViewGroup introduced in Android support library. It behaves as FrameLayout and has a lot of functionalities to coordinate amongst its child views, for example, floating button and snackbar, Toolbar with scrollable view.

Countable

Answer 5

Great explanation here:
https://www.cuelogic.com/blog/using-framelayout-for-designing-xml-layouts-in-android

LinearLayout arranges elements side by side either horizontally or vertically.

RelativeLayout helps you arrange your UI elements based on specific rules. You can specify rules like: align this to parent’s left edge, place this to the left/right of this elements etc.

AbsoluteLayout is for absolute positioning i.e. you can specify exact co-ordinates where the view should go.

FrameLayout allows placements of views along Z-axis. That means that you can stack your view elements one above the other.

Upholster