We have an IOS/Android app that is being redesigned and we're really happy with it,
Since IOS7 we are able to be more creative in terms of UX/UI and it's really wonderful.
My problem is with Android, it IS my favorite platform both in terms of Development possibilities and general ideology but for some reason it's lacking the rich content world of IOS.
We've designed a sidemenu with the following effect which is really amazing and we love it, but we can't recreate it for Android, i've consulted with several developers and they all gave me the same answer "it's a system limit".
My question is - Is it possible to recreate those effects in Android, if not then why (what's the actual limit) and if Yes, then what am i missing ?
We've designed a sidemenu with the following effect which is really amazing and we love it
You're welcome to your opinion. Personally, that would drive me nuts, and I have no idea what benefit it would give users over a regular navigation drawer.
Is it possible to recreate those effects in Android
It is unclear what specific effects concern you.
Can you resize content, such as the original content shown in the video? Yes.
Can you slide content, such as the original content shown in the video? Yes.
Can you fade in content, such as the items of the menu? Yes.
All of this is covered in the documentation. Particularly if you are targeting API Level 14+, property animation is usually the way to go, and you can try NineOldAndroids for a partial backport of those capabilities if you need to support earlier API levels.
If I missed concerns of yours, please comment, or perhaps edit your question.
To put it bluntly, user experience.
Providing an experience consistent with the Android operating system is a Priority for Google and by placing some limitations on the way you develop the UI of your app it can ensure an experience that is familiar from app to app.
You can see the UI guidelines here:
http://developer.android.com/design/get-started/ui-overview.html
Out of interest have you had your app approved by Apple yet?
Also.. Android does allow you to use a "Sliding Drawer" menu which is very similar to your effect which you could use to meet your goals (without the effect of course).
Check out the below mentioned git project. It has so many slide menu styles/animations. You can use the one you want or customize as per your need.
https://github.com/jfeinstein10/SlidingMenu
Check the below android app for the above mentioned GIT project
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.slidingmenu.example
Related
I have seen so many apps that provide auto tapping feature. But they don't provide some specific customization so I decided to create a one. I have seen many tutorials that offers auto tapping, but they are supposed to be used in the same app. But I want to create an auto tapping app that can click on other app's View. I am an intermediate java developer but new to Android studio, so I don't know much about Android APIs. Is there any class or package which can provide this feature. For more clearance, I want to do auto tap, when the color at the specific location on screen, (213, 120) for instance, becomes green.
Thanks in advance!
I am not an expert on the subject, I have experience as a BackEnd developer, I am new to the Android world, just like you I am interested in building an app to automate some farming mechanics in Android games with specific behaviors, so I investigated on the subject and the solution you are looking for is the AccessibilityService API, from Android 8.0 (API level 26) it includes several functionalities to make touches without the need for Root, I leave you links with examples of some open source repos that can guide you.
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/accessibility/service#continued-gestures (Doc)
https://github.com/nestorm001/AutoClicker (Old and abandoned project, but has the functionality of touches)
https://github.com/pylapp/SmoothClicker (A more mature App but need root, it can be helpful to guide you in how to build the UI)
For the detection in the change of the pixel I still do not have a concrete answer, I keep looking, maybe obtaining a dump of the screen every X time and validate the pixels on that is the way but it is still uncertain if it is the way to go.
Something like How to record screen and take screenshots, using Android API?.
I know that you can get a bitmap dump of the screen if you have the activity, but it's not the case, however some class in the following package may be helpful https://developer.android.com/reference/kotlin/android/graphics/package-summary.
I'm currently working in my own implementation, when I have something to show I will gladly share it.
I have many applications which has great GUI like Any.do, alarm clock from doubletwist etc. I was wondering are ll these applications developed using standard eclipse way using java and xml. I was not able to figure out how can i develop such type of GUI using eclipse xml?
All Android apps with a good UI use java & xml.
The only difference is that good apps need a LOT of work and sometimes a custom implementation of some Android Elements.
xml files catering to the different formfactors is the best way to implement a rich app (in fact I don't think there is any other valid way) :
-They allow you to separate the layouts from the code as much as possible.
-They allow you to treat specific form factors independently.
Additionally, Great apps often re-implements some of the basic UI elements. For exemple the implementation of the actionbar in Flipboard allow them to apply their flipping effect to it, something that you cannot do with the basic ActionBar.
Any.do has just been updated and I have not checked this last version yet, but the last time I tried the app, their implementation was not really good. Buttons were far too cramped in the ActionBar and their custom ActionBar was very slow (more than 1 second to acknowledge a tap).
Additional thoughts : sometimes these beautifully designed apps tend to ignore at least some of the Android conventions. It is a really bad idea : you can create a very beautiful app but if its UI elements are totally different from what users encounters in other Android apps it will just make the overall use of the app confusing. imho the best way to create a great app (both visually & functionally) is to use Holo as a design base that needs to be enriched and do not :
-make something totally opposite to the design conventions of the platform just because you think it is good.
-Use a basic android design block in a totally different way that what it is intended for, it will utterly confuse your users.
-Apply another platform conventions.
-Invent your own rules because "you are strenghtening your brand by having the same design on ios, android and your website". You are just being lazy.
a good starting point is obviously the official design site. android niceties is a good source of inspiration. Holo Everywhere & Android UI UX are very interesting sites in order to get more thoughts on how to improve existing apps.
List sections are used quite a lot in Android through out Google's own applications and in some of the framework's features as well, i.e. preferences.
This made me wonder if there is an offical section View available in Android? If so, it seems to be hidden.
Here's a picture from the Android Design site that shows what I'm talking about:
This made me wonder if there is an offical section View available in Android?
No, sorry. There are plenty of libraries for this, and you can probably grab some code out of AOSP for it as well, but there is nothing in the SDK for it. Just because the design folk think it is a good idea does not mean that we actually have code in the SDK to leverage such ideas.
ladies and gentlemen!
Very often on my job I meet the following requirement from the client, when developing android applications: "make it look like and iPhone app".
Yes, I know, that the best way is to offer him canonical Android design with all these patterns like dashboard, using menu button etc... But sometimes this is not the case, as instead, I have to make it look and animate just the same. It's frustrating.
Can you guys, please advice me an android library (if there is one) with iOS-like UI elements? Many thanks in advance, I'm looking forward to hearing from you!
To expand on Martyn's comment, which I agree with.
Perhaps there is a great reason why a client would ask for this, but in many cases I bet they might benefit from being challenged on this requirement. If I was presented with this request, I would first ask "Why?". Perhaps they'd answer as follows:
we need a consistent experience across platforms, or
it will be more cost effective to design once and apply to each platform, or
it doesn't matter why, just do it!
Here are some responses for each:
each user will generally have one phone, and won't require the experience on Android to be identical to iPhone - they only care that it works and looks great on their phone. In fact, an Android user would prefer if you used the UI patterns that are more common to the platform, as opposed designing to match iOS. Likewise for an iPhone user.
we have found that having a designer create a set of creative for iOS allows us to pretty much use the creative as-is for Android. Even though Android might have Tabs on top, versus bottom, we are still able to take the backgrounds, button styles, fonts and color schemes from one platform to the next. There will be slight differences, but overall the brand and look should translate well. Here is an example of porting a single creative design across platforms: http://daleburgosdesign.com/
if they answer in this manner, you might want to consider passing on the job. Pixel perfect matching across platforms is tricky aside from the ideas offered in previous answers (OpenGL and the use of a WebView - via Macarse). If the client can't provide good reasoning for this tricky requirement, then it might be best to search for your next client.
Not a straight forward answer to your question, but I hope you find it helpful!
There is no iphone UI library for android that I know of. What you can do is, get the iphone GUI psd and redo it for 3 sizes of android (for the 3 size ranges) and use the elements of these psd's to theme your application.
I get these kind of similar requirements. Sometimes it wont be much about the looks but about the navigation flow of the application and how new views or activities are animated. From my experience, there is no easy way to do it. So I end up making a lot of adjustments and hacks to get the job done. And I over bill the client. :)
Btw you could also consider libraries such as Sencha Touch, it will look the same in all phones that use a webkit browser.
AFAIK there are no 'iOS-alike' widget libraries for Android.
Because of this, you could reasonably charge the client more for both development and support, thereby providing an incentive to stick with the standard Android UI design and principles.
There is no library to port iphone views to Android but if you are starting both applications from the scratch you have two possible approach to share views between both platforms.
First one is using WebViews and coding HTML, JS and CSS. This kind of app is called hybrid.
Second one is using openGL. You can do it directly or using a framework like cocos2d-x.
Depending on what you are willing to you should choose what to use.
I'd like to develop apps for Android after 2 years of developing iPhone apps. First of all, I'm not a programmer. I'm a UI designer and usability engineer with basic knowledge of app programming. I have a colleague doing the part of the programmer. So my first look into the documents on developer.android.com titled "UI design" resultet in surprise. No real design guidelines, just clutter about coding, no concrete hints how apps have to look like what you are expecting when you read "UI Design". OK - Android is a very open system for many different hardware types - maybe a little bit hard to give advices that fit for all systems - but not impossible. Let's look at e.g. Symbian - it's relatively open too and they have this: forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/8299c7a4-d3d8-4c4c-b62e-97a4c831e6a3/User_Experience_Evaluation_Model_v1_1_en.pdf.html
Great help, good basics!
Apple has this: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/Introduction/Introduction.html
Examplary done!
Now I am searching for the equivalent document for Android UI Devs (again, not the programming part). This one looks great: developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/index.html
but it does not cover all scenarios and sooner or later gets lost in advices for coding.
I'm looking forward to your help.
Many thanks and best regards.
I think those at http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/index.html are the only ones at the moment, quote: The Android UI team has begun developing guidelines for the interaction and visual design of Android applications. Look here for articles that describe these guidelines as we release them.. So it sounds like there will be more in the future but they haven't finished them yet.
You can also find some information here: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/index.html
In general, I don't think Google has a different mindset than Apple when it comes to design so I doubt there will ever be as much official material.
There's a document called androidhig.pdf that seems to be someone that has just created a set ot reasonable guidelines themselves by adapting the IPhone ones, I can't find any download link for that document now, but if you google for the file name you can do quickview on at least one of the links to see the contents of the file.
Google has launched a brand new site with Android UI and design guidelines.
As #ho1 notes, HIG is very much a work in progress. In addition to those suggestions, I'd recommend a recent blog post on UI design patterns, which I found enlightening.
EDITED ADDENDUM: UI design patterns were also described at the I/O conference, available as video.