I am re-pharsing my question to avoid negative points. I am aware of web view, dialogs, popups, notifications. if you have some other ideas please let me know.
I am working on a very big android application, in which I have to add some popup kind of thing, which tells the user what we have updated for this version. Kind of like, what bugs are fixed or whats new things are added.
The window have to be populated once or twice and it have to have user interactions, like click on the link, or contact us, or click on the image to go to some page inside the app. Please let me know any good ideas.
You definitively should give a look to the AlertDialog class
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/AlertDialog.html
This is basically the class used to display a message and get the ok/cancel/anything answer from the user. But it's customizable and you can make more or less what you want according to which button is pressed by the user.
Related
This question might seem irrelevant but I really need help. I need to implement those floating animations that explain actions that a user can take in a particular activity. They are usually shown when an app is launched for the first time and the user can dismiss them to continue interacting with the app. I have provided 2 pictures showing what I am trying to achieve. I have searched all over the internet but what I keep getting are just gestures.shows user that they can scroll left or right!shows the user where notifications are ]1
You can do the whole stuff manually. Or use a prebuilt library called ShowcaseView.
You'll find details, code and guide here http://www.xda-developers.com/android/create-holo-themed-demo-overlays-with-showcaseview/
I would like to display a message to the user for some asynchronous event. For example for an alarm expiration. I would like to display a popup or dialog that is displayed over any activity is the foreground at the moment (and this can be some other application activity) leaving the current activity in the backgound.
Is there a way to do so in Android?
First off, you will be told that this is a bad thing to do, that it is against the Android way of doing things. Users do not like this. And that the Notification area is much better way to do this.
That said... there are ways to accomplish this...
A Toast will display no matter which activity is on the screen. So you could set up a background thread (or better a Service) that will display your information in a Toast. This might be good enough for you.
You may find it useful looking at some Toast source code here.
Also here is a nice page on how to create a custom Toast layout by replacing the default View with one of your own. (I have not done this, but it looks quite interesting):
Custom Toast Alert on androidexample.com
The alternative is much more difficult, and is to display a System Overlay window. Unfortunately you have to do quite a lot of work to get these set up properly.
Here are a few related questions that I used to get it working:
Creating a system overlay window (always on top)
System overlay android 4.0
How to create a system overlay in Android which allows interaction with the windows below it?
Each of these has links to many others - there are loads of System Overlay questions on here.
But things to remember:
In the old days, you could put a system overlay on top, and send
touches through to the activity below. This is no longer possible,
and so a lot of the answers are now out of date.
You may need to
play around with the flags in the provided examples to get exactly
the effect you are aiming for. Not all the examples use the same
flags, so there are some subtle differences in how each solution
works.
Then again, I also believe that the Notification area is a much better UI pattern to use, so I do recommend you try that first. It is easier to do, and most of us expect that type of behaviour rather than a pop-up.
The problem with a pop-up, is that it might interrupt a movie I'm watching. Or a game I'm playing.
Yes, i had created two dialog for income event for background and foreground
I've googled and searched for an answer to my question but all I can find is people asking about rating systems that pop up a dialogue after a number of launches.
My application is for a live wallpaper so I expect most people to launch and set it once.
I just want a preference button that takes users as directly as possible to the app rating screen.
Can anyone suggest the best way to accomplish this? Thank you!
Here is code you are looking for
https://github.com/codechimp-org/AppRater
Add this library in your project and you should be set.
I have a google map application. People can add markers with a longclick.
I wonder what should be the best strategy to tell him to use longclick to add marker, because I don't think it is so obvious.
Should I use DialogFragment once? Should I use a menu Instructions? Or maybe the user is already used to it and there is no need to tell him?
Any advise would be apreciated !
Give demo to the user at the about the working of your application, and continue give him that until he will click the check box 'don't show this again', or make some tutorial option in your application which tell it's working.
I would like to put fairly extensive help information within my app - both "how to use" and explanation of what one is seeing.
The app (map oriented) has a row of buttons at the bottom, and I was considering adding a help button.
Context sensitive help is mostly not appropriate, btw.
What are common and best practices for this?
Thanks
I wouldn't suggest using a help button, once the user knows how to use your app it will be useless, and will only takes some space.
What I do (but it's maybe not the best practice) is to show a popup on the first use. Within the popup I put some basic help and a link to my website which fully explains how my app works (with some screenshots to make it user-friendly). I also put a "Help" button in the activity menu which redirects to my website again.
What I can suggest is to explore by yourself how other android apps shows the help information, and reuse or adapt the one you prefer (this is what I've done).
I have put help into a menu item as I expect new users to click the menu button anyway (my app, Zwitscher also has a button bar at the bottom).
Clicking the menu item then starts an Activity that simply shows a table view that explains the various buttons in the system and contains a link to more information online.
See https://github.com/pilhuhn/ZwitscherA/blob/master/src/de/bsd/zwitscher/HelpActivity.java and
https://github.com/pilhuhn/ZwitscherA/blob/master/res/layout/help.xml
Another option I've seen sometimes is including a help option in the preferences/configuration screen.
Usually it starts a new activity with a sequence of steps to make the user understand everything.