How does android:layout_weight work?

Question

When I have the following, it shows top layout with four colors has much smaller area than the bottom layout area.

According to this documentation, when you add more

Answer 1

I know this is late but hopefully it helps people:

Use android:weightSum on the parent. Here is a link to the dev docs.

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/LinearLayout.html#attr_android:weightSum

Use android:weightSum of 1.0 on the parent and then use 0.x on the child views with android:layout_weight in order for them to use that ratio of space.