Do I need to manually reference each individual object that I create in the XML layout file
Yes, otherwise you cannot do anything with these species. This is actually not so bad. Thus, every time you create a view in your XML and want to reference it, enter the ID:
<View android:id="@+id/the_id"/>
And then from your code, you can reference it using the R class. You can enter R.id.the_id in the example and then Ctrl + Shift + O to force Eclipse to automatically import the necessary files.
You can speed up your productivity using frameworks like Roboguice ; I think this is for lazy people.
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