How can the Navigation Component Benefit in Enhancing the Android Experience?
The popularity of the Android platform has made significant businesses adapt it for their mobile app development company to reach a bigger user base. Diving deeper into the technical aspects of Android, it had been a tedious experience in the past to switch between fragments inside any activity. Coding for the fragment switching and controlling the back stack involves serious struggle from the development point of view. Implementing it in the wrong way could lead to critical issues like “Illegal State Exception”. For making the navigation aspects smoother, there has been the emergence of the Navigation Component from Google. It has not only eased the coding of fragment navigations but also managed aspects like back stack, exceptions, etc.
Navigation Component:
Navigation is the movement of users across several sections in the content piece of the app in successive steps. To ease the coding experience for developers, Android app developers introduced a new navigation aspect that aids in easing complex navigation interactions. This Navigation component provides a simple solution to developer issues related to the navigation activities in the android app development.
The Android Jetpack navigation component has several exciting aspects that aid the easy implementation of navigations. This could range from highly complex navigations like navigation drawers or simple patterns like buttons. The Navigation component not only consists of a complete set of libraries but also guides with a strong framework of in-app navigations. If the app developers are following these simple navigation principles, then they can successfully offer a consistent experience to the app users.
The Navigation component includes 3 important parts.
Navigation graph: It is the XML file that consists of all the key information related to the navigation aspect in one place. Being the latest resource type, it has all the precise content aspects in the app termed as a destination along with all the types of patterns that users can traverse via the app. All kinds of navigation paths are included in the Navigation graph with clear screen visualizations. These screens are the actual fragments and are termed as destinations. There are exclusive actions present between the destinations that describe the paths that users will employ for navigation.
NavHost: NavHost is an empty container that shows the destinations via the navigation graph. The Navigation component has an integrated NavhostFragment that will showcase the possible fragment destinations.
NavController: The Nav Controller is an object that controls the app navigation inside a Nav Host. It will write the exchange process of destination content inside the Nav host along with the user movement via the app.
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Exclusive advantages of Navigation Component:
Managing transactions related to fragments.
Offering consistent resources for various transitions and animations.
Default corrections for managing up and back movements.
Deep linking implementation and managing.
Implementation of several complex navigation UI aspects with simple tasks.
Providing View Model Support via navigation graph for sharing UI-related data through Navgraph destinations.
Principles of Android Navigation:
Navigation has some standard principles with a motive to offer an intuitive and steady user experience for their creative Android app development project. The development of the Navigation component is done for implementing the in-built principles by default.
- The important preliminary destination in any kind of app is the key aspect for users. This will be the starting screen and the last screen as the users will move from one screen to another inside the app employing the UP button.
- Managing the back stack: As the user navigates from various fragments inside the app, there will be the maintenance of a back stack. This back stack aids in navigating the user to the right destination from the source as they move Up or Back. There are some crucial points to be noted in this regard as below:
- The current destination will be existing at the highest position in the stack.
- The start destination will exist at the lowest position in the stack.
- Fresh destinations will be moved to the top of the stack.
- The Current destination is eliminated from the stack while going back.
- The aid of deep linking initializes manual navigation between the fragments. Regardless of employing manual navigation to a specific screen or deep linking, the back stack is settled inside those screens. Hence, if you have employed deep linking to navigate to a specific screen, as you go back, the identical back stack will be employed when you perform manual navigations to that screen.
- The Back and Up buttons perform almost in the same manner with the only difference of the up button employed for only in-app navigations. Up button must not be displayed in the starting app screen since it will not allow out of the app navigation. The back button will allow this activity to the app screen that will exist lower in the navigation ladder.
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Wrapping up:
Navigation is an important aspect of the android app for both users and mobile app developers making it to be existing with swift and steady patterns. Reliable navigation will offer the user uninterrupted movements without any hiccups. The use of the Navigation component in the android app development venture will aid in easy navigations and data passing through the fragments.
There will be automatic movement of a few important aspects which were tough to be managed with the traditional fragment management system. The Navgraph, Navhoist, and Navcontroller aid in handling several fragment transitions inside any kind of android app. It will eliminate the annoying element in managing a large number of custom programs for the app developers in all those activities when taking care of fragments.
There will be a decreased burden in developing fragment transition handling to take minimal time in developing the app. If you want to effectively make use of the Navigation component to develop a user-friendly app, then associate with a leading mobile app development company like Brillmindz. The app developers are well versed with all the latest technological innovations in Android, and deliver user-friendly products that are profitable in the long run.
