We Keep Coding

clickable areas over an image in android studio (java)

I've inherited an Android Studio project with a challenging goal. Basically, the idea is that the app displays an image which is the map of a building (museum). When a user clicks on a room, the app displays the name of that room, and then they have some other options to do things. This works fine as long as we design the app for use one a single device and don't ever plan to use it on anything else, which of course is silly. I have been able to get the map image to be responsive to different size screens just fine. The problem I have is with the buttons, which were drawn over portions of the map during design.
I have used ConstraintLayout, but it isn't doing what I need. For one, the buttons don't really move the way I would expect. For example, when I run the app on a tablet, the image resizes fine, but the buttons are all clustered in one quadrant; they didn't really move with the image resize the way I expected.
The second issue is the button size. Even if the buttons did move when on a larger screen (let's just assume they did), the buttons themselves don't resize. I have tried WRAP_CONTENT, but then it sizes it larger than I want it even in design. Setting it to 0dp just makes a 1 pixel button (not sure why). Is there some way to get the button size to grow in proportion to the image growth when responding to different screen sizes? In other words, in the layout design, I want to be able to specify the button dimensions so that they cover the exact portion of the map image I want, but then when the image grows, I want the button to grow a proportional amount, so that it mostly stays lined up with the room to which it corresponds.
I have read about using an overlay image with colored areas as a workaround, but this won't be practical in some room images where there will be in excess of 20 clickable areas.
I hope that explanation is clear enough. Thanks in advance for any help.
The buttons (there are many of them) are defined in the layout like this:
<Button
android:id="#+id/LateGothicHallBtn"
android:layout_width="46dp"
android:layout_height="102dp"
android:layout_marginEnd="80dp"
android:layout_marginBottom="221dp"
android:background="#00FFFFFF"
app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="#+id/FirstFloorMap"
app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="#+id/FirstFloorMap" />
And then there is a listener for when the button is clicked:
Button LateGothicHallBtn = findViewById(R.id.LateGothicHallBtn);
LateGothicHallBtn.setOnClickListener(this);
If you need it the ImageView code is this:
<ImageView
android:id="#+id/FirstFloorMap"
android:layout_width="0dp"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginTop="4dp"
android:contentDescription="#string/first_floor"
app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"
app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"
app:srcCompat="#drawable/gui2" />
Is that what you need?

In your position, I would advise you to look at libraries that have the functionality you need, for example, AndroidImageMap. If necessary, you can download them, insert them into your project as a module and change the code. Also check these questions, I think it will make it clearer: clickable area of image, How to make certain areas in an image clickable in android

That's not that hard to achieve, you need to override onMeasure in the parent ViewGroup that has the image in the background, and knowing its original size you get the scale to the new dimension you wanna fit then you multiply all coordinates by it: the background image and all buttons l,t,r,b in a similar way AbsoluteLayout works
I myself also prefer to override onDraw and onTouchEvent and draw/click the buttons in the same component, but you can make it work with the android.Button
I can provide more help if you add your code

Creating Android Studio Layout with complete screen as background

I have already created complete screens for my App in the development process using spark. These images are the complete screens including buttons etc. I have set them as android: background and put buttons with android:background="#null" in the places where the buttons are in the images. My Intention was to avoid designing all the screens in android studio and instead just setting the whole screen as a background and laying invisible buttons in the correct spots for functionality. Now I have run into the Problem that my Buttons are in different places depending on the device. I am using relative layouts for this. Thank you so much for your help!

my Buttons are in different places depending on the device. I am using relative layouts for this.
I would recommend that you use constraintlayout if you want things to scale. Then use vertical & horizontal bias to position your buttons where they need to be.
If you are struggling with your parent layout changing between devices, use the constraintDimensionRatio, like this:
<androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout
android:layout_width="0dp"
android:layout_height="0dp"
android:id="#+id/layoutMap"
app:layout_constraintDimensionRatio="H, 2 : 1"
app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"
app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent"
app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent">
</androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout>
You may need to create separate layouts for portrait and landscape if need be.

Android: Horizontal Image Gridview/Scroll?

Have any of you tried out any Horizontal Scrolls/Gridviews to display Images similar to the Facebook mobile image viewer that allows the user to scroll images horizontal one after the other. The android gallery is another example.
I tried to implement this using THIS tutorial but I didn't get the desired output. Any other codes and layouts you guys have tried?
EDITED:
What I basically want is to implement a horizontal scrolling of images as seen on THIS image. As you can see the gridview displays image one after the other. That tutorial caused some errors therefore I didn't continue with it.
I tried the following layout
XML Layout:
<android.support.v4.view.ViewPager
android:id="#+id/pager"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="0px"
android:layout_weight="1">
</android.support.v4.view.ViewPager>

You can do something like that with Viewpager:
Multiple pages at the same time on a ViewPager
As for horizontal scroll in GridView here're some links:
https://github.com/jess-anders/two-way-gridview
https://stackoverflow.com/a/5537327
https://stackoverflow.com/a/15919257

How do I create this Transparent Dialog/Canvas for Android?

I'm a beginner Android developer and I'm making my first app. I'd like to make a simple view that is overlayed on the map with a semi-transparent background. This is what it would hopefully look like:
As you can see, one of these dialogs/windows has a simple integer displayed and the other will have a rendered graph/chart.
What would be the best way to go about making this? A dialog? The problem with that might be that I would for the user to be able to work with the mapview below while this is displayed. And I'm not sure if a simple transparent rectangular canvas is the right way to get this done.
Any suggestions/ideas would be much appreciated. Thanks so much.

two ways to go
-Make it a FrameLayout so add MapFragment first then add a Linearlayout with orientation horizontal and make gravity top and translucent background,so it will be displayed on top of map, and it will also involve the elements inside,
-Instead of FrameLayout make it a RelativeLayout and the same process as above.
-Make the overlay as seperate Activity(which is the worst case scenario)
Sample code for overlay can be like this
<LinearLayout
....
android:divider=".." // some drawable or color whatever you want
android:showDividers="middle"
android:orientation="horizontal"
android:background="a000">
<TextView
....
android:value="58"/>
<com.example.custom.view
..../>
</LinearLayout>

I think you can use a RelativeLayout on the top of the MapFragment, with a black background and some opacity (for that you can use a drawable).
Then, on the RelativeLayout you can add other controls like TextView and ImageView
I don't recommand you to use a Dialog, since it sounds like it's not corresponding to your needs.

Android. How to make dialog buttons appear a bit outside the dialog

I need to have a dialog (it's a game dialog) where buttons are at the lower corners of the dialog. Not inside the dialog but rather on the very corners (i.e. part of the button will reside over the dialog and the part will be outside of it).

First, as far as I know you can't move layout children outside their parent.
I've never tried exactly what you're going for, but I think it can be done. The trick would be to go with an activity with a dialog theme (you can find examples of these on the developer site or the API demos). Make sure your layout's root node has width and height set to wrap_content. Your root layout should be a RelativeLayout and have NO background (android:background="#0000").
Next, add another layout to your root node (FrameLayout would probably work) with a custom drawable for a background (or use the one that the default dialog uses from the framework) and width and height set to fill_parent or match_parent. Set android:padding to some dip value which pulls the background in from the edge of the dialog.
The only thing left to do would be to add your other layout elements to the root node. The FrameLayout will be drawn beneath everything else, and the padding will create the illusion of borders which do not encompass your UI.
Update
Yikes, just tried the above with good and bad results. First, you'll definitely want to look at the "Custom Dialog" example from the API demo, which makes use of:
CustomDialogActivity.java
layout/custom_dialog_activity.xml
xml/styles.xml
drawable/filled_box
Create an activity which uses the above xml layout file, and set the style for the activity to Theme.CustomDialog that you defined in xml/styles.xml. This will get you a red background for your activity. You can then edit the filled_box shape file to just have one background attribute set to invisible ("#0000"). The result should be an dialog-shaped activity with no background.
Next I tried to hack a background using my thoughts from above. The idea should be that there's a phony background drawn behind the other UI elements which does not encompass them, so it could be "shrunk" using layout_margin and not affect them. The problem here is that the phony background needs to have width and height set to relative to the other UI elements, so it sort of HAS to encompass them, so it can properly measure its own width and height relative to them.
So I think the solution could be to do most of what I've said above, except don't try the phony background thing. Just use a 9-patch drawable for your root layout background, and shrink the edges of your background to be drawn farther in than your content. You'd still use the custom theme stuff from above with an invisible window theme.

Here is a sample layout which i tried:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
>
<FrameLayout
android:orientation="vertical"
android:id="#+id/ll1"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:background="#android:drawable/dialog_frame">
</FrameLayout>
<Button android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:id="#+id/button1"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginTop="35dp"
android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
android:text="Button"></Button>
</RelativeLayout>
here is the screenshot:
hope u get the hint , goodluck