I am trying to do a project in android studio that uses Google's appcompat v7 and v4. I set up my new project in android studio which includes grid layout, actionbar, navigation drawer and fragments (all to be supported in froyo). I included a sample navigation drawer template that I thought I could work around, but I find it totally cryptic with the documentation.
Is there any good tutorial out there that can help because all the ones I have seen seem to talk about something different. I downloaded the sample app Navigation drawer app from developer.android.com and tried to see if I could merge the two but to no avail.
I'm pretty much in the same boat as you, but probably about a month or so ahead. I have the better part of a working Nav Drawer style app that I'm putting finishing touches on.
You didn't say whether you are using Eclipse or Android Studio.. I use Android Studio, I find it to be excellent. My Nav Drawer app is all using support libraries. There is a little more fuss to be made from that, things like using getSupportActionBar and getSupportFragmentManager. Basically, you just have to be aware of some of the differences. Others such as the options menu are still causing me some problems.
I found this tutorial to be very useful. http://www.tutecentral.com/android-custom-navigation-drawer/
Don't try to merge projects just yet. It's not always so straightforward, there are dependencies etc that will need to be satisfied. Try to open that tutorial and just edit it in little chunks and test it, to see how it works. Pretty soon you can start from scratch and make it your own.
If you have more questions, google what you can, most things are fairly trivial.. but for the wider understanding stuff.. let em fly. I'll do my best to answer, but it will be the blind leading the blind here..
Related
I'm new at material design. I'm working on some projects and I want to use the material design. But I cannot find any source or sample for components. Is there any code sample (especially animated circle loader)?
Thanks a lot!
There are tens (if not hundreds) samples regarding ways to implement Material Design, some of 'em even described how you could make it work for older versions of Android.
This blog post by Google's own Chris Banes regarding AppCompat v21 is a good place to start when you're also working on Android versions lower than Lollipop.
While this, still from Mr. Banes, thoroughly describe one of Lollipop's most famed API, Palette.
Moving on, this blog post would help you started with those shiny round buttons (or FABs) and, as a bonus, a trick to apply ripple effect to it.
I think those three links should be more than enough to get you started making Material apps - I've built mine and those three were my first guides. Sadly though, I can't find one that matches exactly with your Dribbble link. Then again, I doubt a widget such as those exists today. I've been wrong before though. :)
Hope this helped!
Learn more:
Modular and customizable Material Design UI components for Android
Git link:
https://github.com/material-components/material-components-android
Playstore link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.materialdesign.catalog
According to this link www.androidbootstrap.com/ I am wondering what does it really do, what is for? Am I supposed to use it?
I've read all text on this main page but I am still confused and I do not know should I use it.
The main problem is I don't see the point. Could someone tell me what is it for?
I am open for new technologies but here is the example where I don't understand, but they say that using their package will shorten my work on application.
Regards and I am looking for any information.
I am wondering what does it really do
It generates a skeleton Android project containing specific libraries. It is reminiscent of the new-project wizard in Eclipse, just supporting more third-party libraries, particularly ones that may be a bit of a challenge to get working together.
I had a look at this project to provide a quick set up for actionbarsherlock and dagger DI.
I think it’s a good idea as it seeks to provide an android template, with an out the box solution including sherlock and dagger. But I couldn’t get it working on eclipse, and the forum had a lot of people saying the same (I think its designed for Intelij IDEA)
I also looked at androidkickstartr which is more mature, but again had import issues, so just made my own template and imported sherlock and dagger
I have question about graphic design of android application. On this link you can see my ActionBar in my application using SherlockActionBar. But I want something like on this link. Where can I learn how to do something like that or where can I edit my ActionBar.
I would recommend against using SherlockActionBar for this. I've tried and it just seems so messy and difficult to implement.
In May 2013, Google released a new support library for this kind of Drawer Layout which uses fragments. It's very easy to implement and there are many examples showing how.
Edit:
i see now that on the link you provided, they were using the support library I referred to. However, I do suggest you take a look at the support library, specifivally v7, which will allow you to use the Action Bar in previous version of android, rather than relying on a 3rd-party software package like ABS.
The application currently has tabulations and bar custom made (by previous guy) from fragments to copy cat Apple design.
I want to move toward Android action bar to provide Android experience and usual behavior.
Should I implement Action Bar Sherlock or Action Bar Compat?
Pro ABS:
Lots of documentation
Action bar Tabs is well known (that's what I need to do)
About Holo theme? ABS is great to support it, how perform ABCompat?
Pro ABCompat:
Supported by Google (better in the long run?)
Better connection with navigation drawer (but I will not use one)
No external dependencies in Java Build path
What others arguments help decide? Which one should I pick ?
From my point of view, provided I succeed to do a action bar with fixed tabs, the Action Bar compatibility is the best choice (but not by much).
Thank you for helping me! (even providing arguments I missed)
The main reason that made me switch to ActionBarCompat is the Menu appearence in devices with android <= 2.3. With ActionBarSherlock, the menu appears very ugly, with the default menu of the device. With the ActionBarCompat, the menu appears the same way it appears when you open it in devices with Android >= 4.0 and hardware menu key.
But, be aware that the ActionBarCompat has some bugs to be resolved yet. I'm dealing with this bug:
SearchView taking all the space in the new ActionBarCompat
UPDATE:
Another bug:
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=58321&thanks=58321&ts=1375277660
UPDATE:
I've created a patched version of the ActionBarCompat to solve the issue with the ActionMode. See here:
The ActionMode is being created twice with the ActionBarCompat r18
The reasons why I migrated my app from ABS to Action Bar Compat were as follows:
I have only a very basic implementation of action bar tabs and I could see it would be simple to migrate
I prefer the Google documentation - it is clearer and more complete
Software maintenance will be simpler and less error prone because I now have no external dependencies.
I had run into a problem with ABS whereby I wanted to handle an orientation change (but you can't because of the way ABS hooks in to Android).
I haven't seen any statements from anybody connected with ABS about their long term plans for ABS. So I'm not convinced they are going to continue to support it. I may be wrong - but I haven't seen anything.
Performance is not really an issue for me, but I can't see why Google's "native" implementation would run slower than ABS and I suspect that it may perform better.
These are just my personal impressions.
I think that ActionBarSherlock was a brilliant piece of work, and a great service to Android developers. (By the way I don't have shares in Jake Wharton its developer.) Google have paid it the best compliment possible by including something that does essentially the same thing in essentially the same way (as far as I can tell) in the v7 support library.
But now that the functionality is officially supported some standard arguments apply as to which to choose.
ActionBarSherlock is a third party dependency, which represents a risk in terms of ongoing support. Unless it does something you really need that is not done by ActionBarCompat, or the latter has a bug which you can't work around or wait for a fix for, there's very little argument in favour of sticking with the former.
I recently migrated from ActionBarSherlock to ActionBarCompat and found only one or two minor issues, the main one being that a minor adjustment was required to the stock 9-patch images used for the action bar tab indicator backgrounds, in order to produce the standard tab behaviour on earlier android versions, in my case 2.2==API level 8==Froyo. (Specifically I adjusted the vertical stretchable regions so that they were not adjacent either to the top edge or the colored indicator bar at the bottom of the image.)
I'm looking to create a cross-version compatible android tabbed layout.
The problem I'm running into is when implementing Google's example of TabActivity, I get a depreciation notice. The app I'm writing needs to be compatible down to 2.1, and I'm not finding a clear cut way to make it compatible.
I am aware of the versioning by folder (/layout-v4, /layout-v14, etc) but if possible I want to avoid this.
Are fragments the answer here and if so, does the Android Compatibility Layer V4 become the key to solving this problem?
I'd suggest the best approach might be to use the excellent (and free) ActionBarSherlock, so you can add Android 3+ action bar (including tabs) to apps going all the way back to v2.x versions.
I've used it on a few apps and it's pretty easy. I think it's the right approach to use the proper Action Bar interface across platform versions, and they include tabs and replace the whole TabActivity thing, which was pretty horrible anyway.
http://actionbarsherlock.com/