Improving Layout Performance

Layouts are a key part of Android applications that directly affect the user experience. If implemented poorly, your layout can lead to a memory hungry application with slow UIs. The Android SDK includes tools to help you identify problems in your layout performance, which when combined the lessons here, you will be able to implement smooth scrolling interfaces with a minimum memory footprint.

Lessons

Optimizing Layout Hierarchies

In the same way a complex web page can slow down load time, your layout hierarchy if too complex can also cause performance problems. This lesson shows how you can use SDK tools to inspect your layout and discover performance bottlenecks.

Re-using Layouts with <include/>

If your application UI repeats certain layout constructs in multiple places, this lesson shows you how to create efficient, re-usable layout constructs, then include them in the appropriate UI layouts.

Loading Views On Demand

Beyond simply including one layout component within another layout, you might want to make the included layout visible only when it's needed, sometime after the activity is running. This lesson shows how you can improve your layout's initialization performance by loading portions of your layout on demand.

Making ListView Scrolling Smooth

If you've built an instance of ListView that contains complex or data-heavy content in each list item, the scroll performance of the list might suffer. This lesson provides some tips about how you can make your scrolling performance more smooth.