I've been really trying to soak up everything about Android development, including material design stuff.
My question though is about the floating action button in particular. If it's an integral part of the material design guidelines, how do they expect rookie developers (like myself) to use it easily? I've found lots of github projects with floating action buttons, but I'd really love an official one.
I've done a decent amount of development, and even done an Android app with some of my classmates. We put a floating action button in our app, but we just used one we found on github. In the real world, do people just find one they like and add it to all their apps as a gradle dependency?
Sorry for being ignorant, I have little experience in the professional world. But it just seems to me that if Google wants developers to adopt this, they would make it really really easy to add it to an app.
Thanks!
-Justin
Have a look at the new version of v7 appcompat library .
http://developer.android.com/tools/support-library/index.html
Google is trying hard to Materialise the pre-Lollipop devices(added Palette, added AppCompatDialog and a bunche of compat views), so your floating button may just be around the corner :)
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We have an App for both iOS and Android platforms. Currently our designers have designed similar User Interface for two of them, just have minor differences. Since those two shared lots of common features like buttons, text fields, etc, having similar interface works for both platforms. However, the most obviously differences between iOS and Android (from my point of view), are UINavigationBar in iOS and ActionBar in Android.
Now our interface for Action Bar and Navigation Bar looks like this:
This is followed UINavigation Design that have Title in centre. I'm just wondering should I keep the title centre in Android's Action Bar so two platforms will have similar interface or should I follow Android's design guide (Title next to left icon) for better Android User Experience?
Per Pure Android:
Most developers want to distribute their apps on multiple platforms. As you plan your app for Android, keep in mind that different platforms play by different rules and conventions. Design decisions that make perfect sense on one platform will look and feel misplaced in the context of a different platform. While a "design once, ship anywhere" approach might save you time up-front, you run the very real risk of creating inconsistent apps that alienate users.
This advice definitely applies to the app bar, which has very clear design guidelines as part of the Material Design guide, which is the driving force behind Android design at this time and is supported across all API 7+ devices via AppCompat.
See: https://developer.android.com/design/index.html.
This is somewhat opinion-based, but it is probably best to adhere to the Android styles where applicable, rather than shoot for consistency between you iOS and Android versions. If you want your users to have a comfortable, familiar experience, then keep in mind that they are probably most familiar with other apps on that specific device type.
An argument for consistency between Android and iOS would be (a) simpler to design for, (b) might be easier to test, (c) easier to support.
This all assumes you are building native apps. If you are making an HTML or hybrid app, a more device-neutral style might be acceptable.
I would like to implement a drop down menu from the ToolBar like in the Ios version of Google+:
But as as a beginner in android development, I don't know which component should I use, anybody can help me with that ?
Those SO question you've mentioned in the comments are true: You should not implement an exact copy of that iOS navigation in Android. If you choose to develop an app for Android then you better make it look like an Android app (because that is what your users will expect).
However, that does not imply Android lacks of similar navigation pattern. What you are looking for is ActionBar dropdown navigation and can be found on this official docs. That link should be enough to get you started. :)
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 cannot find either one of these two views in the source, but have seen them both in many apps. Can anyone please tell me what they are called?
Thanks
The second one is an options menu from the action bar. I think it is implemented as a ListPopupWindow.
The first one is not part of the Android SDK, though there are various implementations floating around. Here is an example of one designed for use with Google Maps, for example. Here is one designed for the "quick actions" pattern.
I'm going to assume that they're custom made ones, so you won't find them in the standard Android libraries.
The second one I think is just the way that the default menu looks in ICS (and honeycomb for that matter). If you build for 4.0 and include the code for an options menu I think you'll get that UI by default. If you are looking to customize it check out this page http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/actionbar.html and pay close attention to the "Adding drop down navigation" section.
The first one is not a part of the android UI, that is something specific to the facebook app.
I've noticed that there are several applications which have been developed within the last 6 months or so which share a common design. I can think of 4 off the top of my head, Twitter, Google IO, Evernote and Facebook (new version). They all have a "home" screen with a grid of icons for various app areas. And a top bar with the app logo in the top left, then global/common functions in the top right.
I'm sure the newer apps were inspired by the earlier ones (Twitter was the first I can remember to use this style). My question is: are they all just happening to use this style or is there templates out there to make my app look similarly?
I don't think there are existing "templates" but there were guidelines noted on the dev blog earlier this year that mentioned some of the same techniques: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/05/twitter-for-android-closer-look-at.html.
Many other apps adopted some of those same approaches after the Twitter app came out, and after Google advocated "Dashboard," "Action Bar," and so on.
These slides talk a bit about why to design such interfaces. It also has some good UI tips.