I am somewhat new to android development and the apps I make with it are I would say ugly. I don't like the usual style provided . So I wish to know if there is anyway to style it . Maybe something that allows to style components like using CSS . Anyway applying your own style like border, colour, gradient color, RGB etc
There is very good and detailed tutorial here
and check also this site.
The general solution is to use themes and colors and adjust everything.
Material design can be useful for you.
For video about styling take a look at Youtube video style modern ui
You could check out android UI dev tutorials on youtube. There are some good resources on there. Good luck on your journey into android mobile application development.
Related
I have many xml pages that repeat lines of code, i feel like it would be much cleaner if I used a css page, I have looked it up, but in all the examples, it uses webview, which is something a freind told me to avoid when designing apps for phone use.
can I use a css page to reduce repetition and make my code cleaner? or does it have a side effect?
You can't use CSS natively in Android, however you have a number of choices.
You can either use the built in styling options for android and provide a styles.xml with styles you can reuse throughout the app.
Android Styles and Themes
Another option, if you're set on using CSS is to make use of the pixate library:
Pixate Android
Whilst this isn't production ready yet, it does provide a way for you to use CSS to style your widgets.
I'm an amateur android programmer and I really like to code. My main difficulty is to make apps nice.
I came across a simple app, but at the same time, nice: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.linksaude.bulas
I would like to know if this app has been designed with some specific plugin/add-on for Eclipse or whatever. It seems to be so consistent and beautifully designed that there must be an answer to simplify the building process of such apps.
Thanks!
I think what you're impressed with is the consistent color theme of the application. It looks like its designers carefully overrode the default design of Android widgets with their own custom scheme.
There is NOT any plugin for development tools that will help you achieve this; however, there are many external tools.
Here is a tool to generate styles for the action bar (the navigation bar at the top):
http://jgilfelt.github.io/android-actionbarstylegenerator
A tool to generate custom colored Holo widgets: (Holo is the theme in modern Android platforms):
http://android-holo-colors.com/
And my #1 favorite resource for this type of customization, this website:
http://www.stylingandroid.com/
These three are more than sufficient to customize an interface like the one you linked to above. Good luck!
Though beauty is in the eye of the beholder, this will do the job.
http://developer.android.com/design/index.html
Welcome to Android Design, your place for learning how to design
exceptional Android apps.
There are some DevBytes videos on YouTube of how you make your app beautiful.
The result is an application which looks very modern and beautiful, you should have a look at those videos
What are the possibilities to develop android apps with custom styled widgets (by widgets I mean gui elements like buttons, boxes, menus). I want to develop android apps which don't use the standard look and feel of android. What are the widget libraries available? Are there any other ways to achieve this?
One of the possibilities would be to use html and phonegap and style the app with css. But I'm looking for a non-html and phonegapesque way to achieve this.
Look for example at the apps mentioned on the following page:
http://androidquark.com/top-6-best-alternative-photography-apps-instagram/
did they draw their widgets themselves? Or can such effect be achieved using the themeing mentioned in one of the answers?
You can customize your widgets just about any way you wish. For example, buttons are easy to customize by using ImageButton, and assigning it to any graphic you wish. Here's an example of custom "buttons" in a palette in a soon to be released update to an app of mine...even the crayons are buttons.
You can find a collection of them here:
https://github.com/mingyuan-xia/DevAndroidQuickly
I have created an Android app using the standard controls available. It seems that most apps on the market have their own set of controls. It generally looks much better that the standard controls. How do I create better looking control? Can I just apply a theme or should I overwrite the onDraw method? For instance, there is a problem with the default android spinner control details here .
adding custom images is the best way to have more eye-catching GUI, use colorful & meaningful images to your application to appeal users. Custom theme's and styles are helpful too.....
You can apply different themes and styles on the one hand or work with 9patch-drawables - have a look here for details and examples
I have an idea to create Themes for Android Mobile. But I have no knowledge of how to do this. I would need to know about the following things:
What is the file format of a theme for Android?
What kind of things I want to handle to change the themes (i.e background, directory window, wallpaper, icon selector style, etc.)
How to start to learn about this
Sites and tutorials for beginners
Sample applications and code
If you passed by information about anything above, please share with me. It would be helpful.
Thanks.
I would start with Google's page on Styles and Themes. Many of your questions are answered there.
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/themes.html
Here's a simple tutorial:
http://developerlife.com/tutorials/?p=309
EDIT:
If you are talking about themes for the phone instead of the app, you can create themes for specific home screen replacements such as aHome. I'm sure if you look around their site you can see how to create a theme for their app.
There are also sites like Android Themes, but they require that you have rooted your phone and have installed a custom ROM such as those by Cyanogen.
Perhaps you could also write your own custom home screen.