In this article you will see the basic fields which is used in many application. Familiarizing these fields will help you create more complex android application.
The below given are the terms you have to be familiar with in order to create your android application,
Activity layouts
Text Fields
Buttons
Image View
Activity layouts
A layout defines the structure for a user interface in your app
1. Linear Layout
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.
2. Relative Layout
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).
3. Webview
Displays web pages.
4. List View
Displays a scrolling single column list.
5. Grid View
Displays a scrolling grid of columns and rows.
The above resource are taken from the android developers site - Link
This can be viewed and configured on your layout file(the xml file). Click to open your XML file from app-->src-->main-->res-->layout-->activity_main.xml. Wait for few mins for Gradle to build the layout windows, this build speed depends on the system specification you are working on.
By default the Design tab will be chosen, click the text tab which will give you the xml version of the file
In layout window you have to watch 2 important panel, the left panel and right panel. The left panel contains two option,
1. Palette
Palette will provide fields which can be used for both output and input for your android application. Android Studio is by default packed with lots of these fields
2. Component tree
Component tree will help you manage the fields placed on the layout xml. When developing a complex application you will have to manage these fields without the tampering them. For relatively smaller application you won't find this much useful.
The top panel contains below items,
1. Orientation for View
Let you set the orientation of the layout you are working on.
2. Design Surface
Let you have blue print along with your layout to help you place the field without overlapping with other fields.
3. API version for Preview
Let you preview the layout created on the different API. This will give you better understanding how the app will look in other devices and helps you tweaking them to be better.
4. Device for Preview
Let you preview the layout created on the different devices. Since several devices out there on markets are on different screen width and height ratio it is import to verify and develop application usable on them.
5. Theme for Preview
You can change the app themes via this dropdown, we can change them even on androidmanifest.