Changes

Begin by launching Android Studio and creating a new project. Within the New Project dialog, enter GridLayoutSample into the Application name field and ebookfrenzy.com as the Company Domain setting before clicking on the Next button.

On the form factors screen, enable the Phone and Tablet option and set the minimum SDK setting to API 14: Android 4.0 (IceCreamSandwich) which is the oldest SDK version containing GridLayout support. Continue to proceed through the screens, requesting the creation of an empty activity named GridLayoutSampleActivity with a corresponding layout named activity_grid_layout_sample.

Click on the Finish button to initiate the project creation process.

When the view is dropped at this position, the existing columns will be shifted one place to the right, a new column will be inserted at the left hand edge of the GridLayout and the new button placed into the cell.

Following the same sequence of steps, add one Button view on the second row of the grid positioned after row 0 in column 0 so that the layout resembles that of Figure 18-6:

Figure 18-10

An alternative option to centering is for the child view to fill the space available. To achieve this, change the fill setting of the layout:gravity property to fill_vertical. It is important to note that different categories of gravity properties are combined as they are selected. For the selected cell, for example, we have now enabled both center_vertical and fill_vertical gravity properties. This can be verified by referring to the layout:gravity line in the Properties panel as indicated in Figure 18-11: