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Customize the action bar is not very easy, and if you support the old android versions you need the compatibility library. What are the advantages and disadvantages to use a view instead of the action bar?
Well, if you've made a view that works the same and look the same as the action bar, you've actually implemented the action bar, so why bother doing it instead of just taking the code of it...
Anyway, the action bar is a very well known component over most Android apps, and it's part of the look&feel of them and of the OS itself.
doing things on your own will take a lot of time and effort, and it will have a huge chance of making the users not comfortable with using it (unless you've done something really remarkable and easy to use).
developers can always "invent the wheel" , but most of the times, it's not worth it.
The action bar is an important design element, usually at the top of each screen in an app, that provides a consistent familiar look between Android apps. It is used to provide better user interaction and experience by supporting easy navigation through tabs and drop-down lists. It also provides a space for the app or activity’s identity, thus enabling the user to know their location in the app, and easy access to the actions that can be performed.
use ActionBar instead of a View so you won't reinvent the wheel. It's not hard to customize if you use tools: http://jgilfelt.github.io/android-actionbarstylegenerator/
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I Developed An android game Using OpenGlEs
Now I want to Create its UI And Main Menu Items, Im currently using relative Layouts to create the menu, Buttons and their Animation, But since i have many items in my menu, it is trouble to work with,
What is the best way to implement GUI in android? should i keep Going with layouts or work with Canvas and SurfaceView?
It depends on your choice if you just want to choose between XML based and custom Views.
XML based layouts easy to design, so you can quickly implement those, You can have basic animations with them but no complete control over the drawing mechanism. Straight forward control to Inputs.
While Canvas and SurfaceView approach requires you to do all the drawings and then handle Inputs, this way you can have full control over drawings but it adds more complexity to code side.
You can choose what suits your need , on the other hand, if you have too many views ie too many button etc. You can simply try switch statement and applying distinct width/height to each element or use onTouchListener to get coordinates of touch and respond (supposing you already know coordinatesbof all views) hope this helps.
If you're looking for an easy way to create UIs for Android, Eclipse and Android Studio both provide a WYSIWYG UI creator. I have not used it yet but it should be fine for layouts which do not need significant customization. If all you're doing is creating simple menus/text/buttons then this should serve you fine, no need to use anything more complex than the Views/Layouts provided by the Android API.
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I know its a very general question but I really keen to know and want to develop an android application with special UI (I mean a professional UI like Google Inbox app).
I just wanted to know if there is a special sort of technology used in it or it just made by relative layout and linear layout and other android UI component which known in Android SDK with java.
any kind of clue would be greatly appreciated.
The design language you're seeing is called Material Design.
The user interface elements that it may be using are RecyclerView for storing a list of information and CardView to represent individual items in the list:
<android.support.v7.widget.RecyclerView/>
<android.support.v7.widget.CardView/>
Have a look at this https://developer.android.com/training/material/lists-cards.html on how to cook up such an activity (a screen in Android).
The theming your application is not too difficult. Have a look at https://developer.android.com/training/material/theme.html
There is no specific strange technology but some principles. please take a look at this:
http://www.google.com/design/spec/material-design/introduction.html#introduction-goals
it may give you some ideas.
Certainly Google is doing some cool things, and they make good use of their own platform, but I don't believe there are major special technologies they are using just for their own apps. They just put together view hierarchies, nice animations, and nice resources, to make it look good.
Was there a particular aspect you are wondering about?
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Background
I'm making an alternative to the default app-manager app (here), and currently I have 4 sorting options and one filtering option:
sort by install time, update time, package name and app name
include system apps or not
This can be shown here:
As you can see, both filtering and sorting are shown here via the action bar submenu, and I think I should do it differently.
The problem
I wish to add more features for filtering and I think the current implementation would not suffice.
I've read through the guidelines (here and here) and I'm not sure if a navigation drawer should be used , and maybe I should use the "View control" (link here) component on the action bar for the sorting part or not.
The question
How should I address this?
Is there any clear rule about where to put filters options (of the data being shown to the user)?
What about the sorting features?
According to the docs, a navigation drawer doesn't sound appropriate. It's more targeted at getting around between different activities/screens.
The View Control dropdown doesn't seem to fit either; you're not really changing views/accounts or anything, just reorganizing what's already there.
If I were you, I'd change the sort settings ActionBar item to open a dialog instead of a dropdown. You could have your checkboxes there, and a spinner for which field to sort by.
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Much importance has been placed on this UI element. And for good reason too, as it provides a standard UI element, for developers and users alike. So, please understand that I do not wish to contest its usefulness.
On Action Bar pattern: (taken from here)
It provides several key functions:
* Makes important actions prominent and accessible in a predictable way
(such as New or Search).
* Supports consistent navigation and view switching within apps.
* Reduces clutter by providing an action overflow for rarely used actions.
* Provides a dedicated space for giving your app an identity.
If you're new to writing Android apps, note that the action bar is one
of the most important design elements you can implement. Following the
guidelines described here will go a long way toward making your app's
interface consistent with the core Android apps.
The question:
Is an Action Bar indispensable? Are there functions that cannot be implemented if one chooses to forgo this pattern (may be in navigation dept.)? Would there be any platform or device specific problems?
It is not mandated in any way by the Android Platform. You can very easily accomplish many of the same things designed to be done in the ActionBar on your own (navigation, context information about your app).
You will not have any programmatic challenges doing these things without using the ActionBar.
However, this component is a very important pattern in the Android OS, so you better have a very good reason to not use it, as your app will not 'fit' in the Android ecosystem, which will be a negative user experience.
Bottom line, there is nothing mandating that you must use the ActionBar, and you can accomplish the same actions in other ways, but this is not suggested, you should use it, so your app looks like it fits in the Android ecosystem.
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Is there a possible to use actionbar with tabs and the collapsed action menu in one row
like in the image:
I would like to use standard android actionbar ,not the 3rd party lib.
Yes, it is quite possible to do that without using a third party library. However, it will diminish your backward compatibility. What you can do, and what everyone else does, is use ActionBarSherlock.
Why do we need this third-party lib?
ActionBarSherlock is an extension of the support library designed to facilitate the use of
the action bar design pattern across all versions of Android with a single API.
The benefit of this is:
A lot more users for the app
A stable, tested library at your disposal
http://actionbarsherlock.com/
When you use the standard actionbar, it does this only when there is a lot of space to do this. It will be like this when you are in a landscape phone or a tablet layout.
You cannot force the native actionbar to do this layout always. You can instead use a third party tab layout as a custom view. You can use this library. It is great. https://github.com/astuetz/PagerSlidingTabStrip