1/16 With the release of #AndroidStudio 4.0 beta 1, I think it's time for a quick recap on what's available in AS 4.0 in the Design Tools, in the spirit of the thread I wrote back in September, with the first canary of 3.6.
Spoiler alert: we added *many* more features…
Spoiler alert: we added *many* more features…
2/16 First of all -- we continued to iterate on previously released features: dynamic module support in the navigation editor, support for ConstraintLayout Flow in the Layout Editor, improvements in the Resource Manager, DnD, etc.
3/16 I will highlight a small but meaningful change in the Split View UI introduced in 3.6 -- it should be easier to discover now :) 
4/16 Here's a short video of Split view -- as you can see, it lets you toggle between seeing only your code, only the design mode, or both. And tool panels can be shown or hidden depending on the mode (and studio will remember it)
5/16 Let’s move on to the second highlight : Multiview :) It is now available in 4.0 -- with more functionalities! While it still let you visualize at a glance how your layout behave in different form factors (notice the tablet UI issue here) …
6/16 ... it lets you check more things, like how your UI works for color blind people or if someone changes the system font size
7/16 ... even nicer, it allows you to create your own custom set of visualization!
8/16 Now, let’s switch gears to focus on code edition. In 4.0, we added support for visualizing a custom view -- as you are working on it. You can quickly toggle between measure modes (wrap, match_parent…) to test the behavior of your view too.
9/16 It's easy as well to test how your custom view resizes!
Not only should this feature makes creating a custom view a faster and more pleasant experience, it also encourages you to write a well behaved view -- so that it shows up correctly in the other design tools :)
Not only should this feature makes creating a custom view a faster and more pleasant experience, it also encourages you to write a well behaved view -- so that it shows up correctly in the other design tools :)
10/16 And this brings us to the larger features in 4.0 -- brand new tools! First, the new live layout inspector. It allows you to inspect a running app (in debug mode), streaming any changes. It's easy to see how an app is structured this way.
11/16 Even better, the inspector let you find out where a value comes from in your project -- making it a lot easier to find issues and fixing them
12/16 Last but not least -- the new #MotionEditor! first, you need to make sure to use #ConstraintLayout 2.0 in your project
13/16 Then, the easiest way to create a #MotionLayout is to convert an existing #ConstraintLayout -- a simple right-click will do the trick.
14/16 And just like that, with #MotionEditor, adding animation to your application becomes a much simpler exercise!
15/16 And this concludes this thread on the new goodies in AS 4.0 -- I'm very proud of our team, and all the hard work done to deliver those features to you. We believe they will be a huge help when building Android applications.
16/16 To sum it up -- try #AndroidStudio 4.0!
I think it's shaping to be our best release ever.
As usual -- file feature requests and bugs on issuetracker.google.com -- it's a huge help to the team.
That's all, have fun until AS 4.1 :)
#AndroidDev #Android #AndroidDesignTools
I think it's shaping to be our best release ever.
As usual -- file feature requests and bugs on issuetracker.google.com -- it's a huge help to the team.
That's all, have fun until AS 4.1 :)
#AndroidDev #Android #AndroidDesignTools
