Previously I made some apps with Adobe Flash Builder. That's works great but is not the best choice is some cases so I start with developing Android apps with use of ADT.
Like in Flash Builder you can set several icons for different screen resolutions. I can understand why but found it is not really necessary when creating one high resolution icon, this works fine (scaling down is better than scaling up). This also avoid the extra work that is needed to create these icons, just one icon.
Long story short, I want to create just one icon, 144x144 pixels at 96dpi and tell Android to use this icon.
Also I want to point the application icon to the asset directory instead of the res/drawable directory. The reason for this is that the icon can be reused by the (web-)application and for another reason, I have made a webApp tool to create a compressed version of a webApp and put the contents in the asset directory of a Android project.
Because the webApp can also run in the browser I have already created some icons (like favicon, apple-touch-icon and apple-touch-startup-image) and want to reuse these icons in the Android project automaticly.
The idea is also to create an application project template so it is quite easy to create a android app of a webApp.
Question
Andy idea how to change the location of for example the application icon? Using a path doesn't work (it generates an error, can't compile).
android:icon="#drawable/ic_launcher"
android:icon="assets/appicon.png" #<- doesn't work
Actually found the solution myself and is pretty simple. The only thing that is a bit tricky in ADT to validate the new declaration because at first 'it says' that the declaration is invalid. The workaround is to cut (ctrl+X) the declaration, do a project clean by Project|Clean and then put it back by paste it again (ctrl+V). Weird but true ;-)
You can declare a string resource like this (in XML file):
<resources>
<string name="app_icon">assets/appicon.png</string>
</resources>
android:icon="#string/app_icon" <- this works
Then you can use just one high-res icon image as icon for all devices! Looks great! See also picture below (between red rectangle ;-)):
Related
Android comes with many built-in drawables that are listed on this page. Is there any page where one can see what each of these drawables looks like?
E.g., we need to display a green check and red cross depending upon whether a web request succeeded or not. We would like to see if there is any built-in drawable we could use for this instead of creating our own drawables. But the web page linked does not show how the drawables look like so we don't know if there is a built-in drawable that works for us.
Is no such web page exists, does anyone know how one can iterate over the built-in collection of drawables? Then, we could try writing a program ourselves to do the visualization.
I'm not sure that I understand your question correctly, but if you are using Android Studio, try right clicking the resource folder -> New -> Image Asset and then choosing one of the icons. It gives you a preview of what the icons look like.
Here is an app to visualize the built in icons in a photo gallery. It lets you quickly browse the built in icons and search what you are looking for.
With older versions of Android Studio, all of the drawable bucket folders were created by default (i.e. drawable-mdpi, drawable-hdpi, etc.). In newer versions of Android Studio, it only provides drawable and drawable-v21. Why is that?
Is there a reason that Android (in its infinite wisdom) no longer gives you the separate bucket folders?
Just to note, I know you can just add them manually, but I want to make sure there isn't some new best practice reason to not use those folders anymore.
Thank you to everyone who tried to help. You helped me reach the final answer, but no one solution was quite right. #user3137702 was probably the closest, as it IS related to the whole move to vectors/SVGs. I couldn't find a definitive answer, like something directly from Google (although I imagine it is out there), but from what I've gathered from a bunch of articles, there is probably a reason they are doing this.
For starters, it looks like this started in Android Studio 1.4. I am in 1.5 right now. It seems that Android is moving in the direction of no longer needing you to create your own density folders (i.e. mdpi, hdpi, etc.) for drawables (mipmaps is different, so please don't confuse that with what I am talking about). As of Android Studio 1.4, it will take the SVGs you put in the regular drawable folder (as in not the v21 folder), convert them to PNGs, and place them in auto-generated density folders for you during the build sequence (so Gradle does this for you, essentially) for all versions older than API 21. For 21 and up, SVG is supported different, which is a whole other topic. But this essentially makes SVG support backwards compatible all the way to API 1!!!
HOWEVER, there is a BIG catch. This SVG conversion is not always as successful as you might hope. It only supports a subset of SVG files, so depending on how you save it (i.e. what settings are applied when saving), it may not render properly. Even commonly used settings, such as gradient and pattern fills, local IRI references, and transformations are NOT supported (yet). If you are working with SVG files that you didn't generate, you will likely have problems importing them. If you or someone you work with directly generates them, you may have to experiment with how you save the files, and you should test builds often on older versions of Android to make sure it turned out as expected.
To import SVGs into Android Studio 1.4+, follow these simple steps:
Right-click on the res/drawable folder
Select "New"
Select "Vector Asset"
At this point, you can select a "Material Icon", which works
really well, and there are a bunch of beautiful "free" icons you can
select from. For indie developers, without icon design support,
this is nice!
OR - you can select "Local SVG File"
Then choose an SVG from either option with the "choose" option. WARNING: This is where it could possibly go wrong, if the SVG you import isn't saved properly.
Hit "Next"
Verify it is saving in the right place, and then Click "Finish"
At this point, it is reference-able with: android:icon="#drawable/ic_imagename" (using your image name instead of ic_imagename, of course)
#CommonsWare's response was very helpful in leading to the right solution, but from what I saw, generating several variations of new projects from different template and version support settings, there wasn't any way to actually have the old density folders get auto-generated. There is definitely more going on here than just a different template-version selection. But as he said, depending on what template/version you select, you may end up with a different set of those two drawable folder types. But specific to my question, Android Studio does seem to be putting an emphasis on this new approach of not creating your own individual drawable density folders at all.
It's pretty cool, imo, but it still needs some work. In practical terms, I will likely still need to add the drawable density folders to support all the images I work with, until this mechanism gets a little more supportive of all types of SVG renderings.
And one more tidbit - Because this is all handled through Gradle (the actual generation of the density folders) you can add build settings through the flavor mechanism to limit which density folders you want to generate. So if, for example, you feel mdpi images have reached the end of their usefulness for your particular user base and would like to leave that size/density out of your app to shave a couple MB off the app size, you can set that in the Gradle build flavor.
I recently made an app for android using android studio and set the icon and put it on my phone.
The problem is in the app list the icon appears as the android logos face, but when I manage the app, the icon is correct, and when on my phone I look at the apk its also correct.
Only on the app list is it incorrect.
What I've checked so far is:
Right Click the folder system, New > New > Item asset.
Set this as the application app and the image i want.
Also in the AndroidManifest.xml I've also set the
android:icon="#drawable/ic_launcher"
and on the left, the little image appears.
Any other idea's would be appreciated.
Thanks
If any other info is needed please let me know.
android:icon="#drawable/ic_launcher"
instead of ic_launcher put your drawable name in manifest
Check that you have created app icons for all different DPI's. If you check in your res folder there will be multiple drawable folders, suffixed with the different DPI's such as hdpi, xhdpi etc.
You will have to create versions of your icon for each of the different sizes as the OS will pull the most relevant size for what it needs to display at the time, small ones for the manage app's list, larger ones for your launcher.
There's a handy web tool to do this
http://romannurik.github.io/AndroidAssetStudio/icons-launcher.html
As a side note, the lastest android studio and the above web tool uses a mipmap folder rather than drawable for application icons, you can either just copy the images into their relevant drawable folders or change your manifest to use the #mipmap prefix.
So when I start a small application for Android, (I'm Using Eclipse if that matters) I give my application a name, minimum SDK and such. Then, when it comes down to picking a launcher icon, I created an icon with 1024 x 1024 pixels using Adobe Illustrator (if I'm clearly doing something wrong say so) and export it to .png file.
When I build my android application project, the icon is copied into the different drawable folders (mdp, hdp, xhdp...). So my question is does Eclipse already change the dp of my icon to match the different size screens? And my second question is when I add other icon (not the launcher) do I have to manual change the dp and add it to the corresponding drawable folders.
Sort of. It's not best practice to use the set of icons automatically created by Eclipse, for the very reason you mentioned. Highest quality is always manually creating the images via photoshop/fireworks/your preferred image software following these guidelines:
http://developer.android.com/design/style/iconography.html
I want to add a feature on my app to let users give a feedback on data. (for example to report errors or mistakes).
Is there a standard icon for it?
please, visit your android-sdk-* folder, there should be default set of icons and pictures in the ./platforms/android-XX/data/res/drawable-Xdpi/ where "XX" and "X" stand for your android version and screen size. all the standard icons are there.
There are a few system icons whose filenames match 'feedback', but none of them look appropriate to me.
Best I could find is "ic_menu_report_image.png".
I've been using "ic_menu_start_conversation.png".
Whether it’s useful for your app mainly depends on the iconset you’re already using. In a chat-app for example, this icon would be a poor choice :)
Note: this icon is marked as protected. You'll have to copy the images to your source manually.
Because these resources can change between platform versions, you should not reference these icons using the Android platform resource IDs (i.e. menu icons under android.R.drawable). If you want to use any icons or other internal drawable resources, you should store a local copy of those icons or drawables in your application resources, then reference the local copy from your application code. In that way, you can maintain control over the appearance of your icons, even if the system's copy changes.