My question is not about how but is it OK to use a custom size for actionbar from the perspective of future releases of Android ?
Could using a custom size break the product in future releases ? or need more testing now and future ? What kind of things should I think of, before using a custom size ?
Our designer is iOS guy and is giving me designs with thin actionbar as in iOS. I want to know any technical reasons to use standard size before pushing back.
appreciate any responses.
No, there's no problem.
The ActionBar is now customizable with Toolbar. And Toolbar has been added to support library (which indicates that it's probably going to be used widely).
But as in if it's OK design-wise, you can take a look at Material Design specs to get more information.
Related
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
I want to know which actionbar blackmart alpha app use?
here is a screen shot from its search view on search icon clicked:
http://i.stack.imgur.com/PatzU.jpg
I want to use this actionbar because sherlock actionbar does not supoort search view in android 2.3 < devices.
If any one have a tutorial about how to create this actionbar with search view, it can really help me.
You better user ActionBarSherlock. It's a nice lib that provides backward compatibility down to Android 2.1 and mimics the Holo ActionBar that looks like this one in your screenshot. There's also plenty of documentation and questions and answers about it here in SO. Besides that, it's pretty reliable, and easy to use. Many famous apps use it.
I'm working on a project should have an ICS-ish design with the UI elements presented on these mockups:
The thing is that minSDK requirement is API 7. What would be the best way to approach it?
You can customize to get all of those UI elements and it's probably the best way to do it in this case.
Check out ActionBarSherlock, it's gonna help you with design 1-4.
For the last two you simply customize the theme to show the images that you wanted.
The Spinner design is going to be tricky I reckon since the selection in pre-honeycomb presents as a dialog and used up full screen. It's possible, but I just don't know the best way to do it yet.
I like how the Android 3.0+ action bar looks, but I don't want it to be on top of the screen. Is there a way to move it to the bottom or to the side?
It is not possible to do so. At least not using public APIs. You could easily find a way to do it but your app would be inconsistent with other apps and likely to break with future updates of the OS.
I think you may have some luck if you delve deep enough into ActionBarSherlock's source code. Since that library creates an ActionBar for pre-HC devices, you may be able to just change the position where it appears. This isn't exactly the answer you were looking for, but it just might be able to solve your problem.
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