I am wondering what are the legal ramifications of using an icon from the internet in my app. I am not much of an artist but there are gazillions of icons on the web. I was going to use one and tweak it a bit and use it for my android app. Is this legal to do?
Thanks.
If you wish you can use your icons from drawable folder by creating vector icons giving it your own colors and styles
Related
I am developing an app in which there are multiple tabs with icon without any title. The problem is that the icons are not looking as bright it should. I used white color(FFFFFF) in creating icon assets. Still it doesn't looks so good.
The pic above shows Facebook Messenger and my App. There is difference between color(although both are white).
Any suggestion will be appreciated.
Yeah I have experienced similar problem. I think it is fault of android asset studio when I create icon with white in reality they are no white as I expected.Then I found very good online studio which is same as Android asset studio even better than that. Solution for this I think you have create icon out from AS then import them to appropriate folders.Here online icon generate web site link
Note: The question is old, but I consider sharing this information could be useful for anyone who could stumble upon this issue in the future.
If you use the Asset Studio tool from the Android Studio your icons will contain
alpha channel with a value of 60% (value depends on selected colour). I provided an example below.
In case you can use vector graphics it should work for you because you can freely edit XML file describing the generated image. Just remove android:alpha=".." attribute.
If you cannot use vector graphics and want to avoid transparency use this official online tool from Google to generate material icons for your application.
This tool supports multiple sizes, black and white colours, and SVG as well as PNG format:
Issues example of 60% alpha channel in Android Studio:
Coming from web development to Android development, I've found that there are many similarities and differences.
Being used to icon fonts, I have some questions about using fonts and icons in Android apps.
Are icon fonts a "thing" in Android app development?
I've seen people mentioned putting icon images under drawable, but others say to put them under mipmap. What are the differences?
Thanks.
Q1. Yes, Icon Fonts are a "thing" in Android. I suggest you do a Google Search on how to use them, or you could ask another question on StackOverflow.
Q2.
The mipmap folder should only be used for your app's Launcher Icon, all other images should be placed under the drawable folder. This is because the launcher icon's resolution is different from the device's current density. See this for more
Can I use glyphicons in an android app?
If yes, how?
You can use ImageView to simply display a picture.
However Glyphicons icons are not free.
It's free for Twitter Bootstrap due to a partnership only.
If you want to display a SVG picture, take a look to this article.
Allthough it is possible to use any custom image in an imageview it is not recomended by the android branding guide, since the android user is familiar with android's own icons.
To use them you can put them among your resources and use them just like you would do with other resources, images and icons.
I created my own icon for my app using Eclipse (Manifest->Application->Icon etc) and this created the same icon for all different phone screens. However, I now need that same icon for the Google Play market and it needs to be 512x512. Is it even possible to enlarge that icon using Eclipse?? Thanks.
Eclipse creates it in your project root, name: ic_launcher-web.png or something like it.
Not that I know of, but you can use Android Asset Studio
I used it to make plenty of action bar icons, notification icons and just general icons. I think it is a great tool all android developers should be aware of :)
I downloaded some free icons and created a notification. At first I thought something was broken but then I realized that the icon I had used was in the same color as the background.
The pack I downloaded included several versions like "holo_dark" and "holo_light". I assume that this has something to do with theming in different android versions or user customizable settings.
What is the intended way to figure out which icon to use in such cases?
The icons are specific to the theme that you will be using in your android application. You have to identify the theme in your application and then use the specific set of icons for your theme.
For more clarity you can refer the Android Asset Studio ActionBar and Tab Icon Generator and see the difference in icons generated for different themes.
Also this article will be very useful in understanding how Styles and Themes work in Android.