Android UI Design: Limitations of Views
<p>A User Interface (UI) is the point of interaction between a user and a system. It encompasses the visual elements used to reflect and/or control the state of the system. This “state” refers to the condition of the system at a specific moment.</p>
<p>Since the inception of Android development, Android Views have served as the standard approach for creating native Android UI. However, they have now been superseded by Jetpack Compose. To fully grasp the ingenuity of Compose, it’s crucial to analyze the limitations posed by traditional views:</p>
<ol>
<li>Lack of Declarative Syntax</li>
<li>Complex UI State Management</li>
<li>XML Overhead</li>
<li>Performance Concerns</li>
<li>Testing Challenges</li>
</ol>
<h1>1. Lack of Fully Declarative Syntax</h1>
<p>Imperative UI design and declarative UI design are two different approaches to creating user interfaces in software applications. They differ in how they specify and manage the UI components. Learn more about Imperative and declarative programming.</p>
<p>Traditional views are partially imperative and declarative.</p>
<p>The UI is initially formed through XML, utilizing a declarative approach (transformed into views via <code>setContentView()</code>). Subsequently, Kotlin/Java is employed for state management and dynamic UI element addition, following an imperative methodology, this is where the problem is.</p>
<h2>Dynamic UI element addition.</h2>
<p>This can be tricky depending on the type of layout that was initially selected in XML. If you used relative or constraint layout you would have to initially find how each element are constrained/related, adjust the constraints/relativity of the surrounding views before positioning the UI element. This is error prone and time consuming.</p>
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