when the adt eclipse Graphical Layout thing works, it is pretty awesome. that it sometimes manages to actually show my custom view is super great. i just wish it were something that was consistently robust -- there's enough times when it seems to go crazy that i've been trained not to really expect it to work or to trust it. especially when i talk to "long time" android devs, who had to suffer through previous incarnations of it. but today it has done more good than harm, so that's nice.