I'm looking for something similar to the OS X / iOS NSOutlineView, basically a class which encapsulates something like a table which is also hierarchical and allows opening and closing of subordinate parts of the outline. So far I have been unsuccessful in my search, even on developer.android.com, which leads me to believe that maybe Android does not have such a thing. However, this seems hard to believe, given how ubiquitous outlines and hierarchical structures are. Am I missing something, or how is something like this generally done on the Android platform? How would one port code relying on such a construct to Android?
Hi Michael have a look on my implementation an android counterpart of the NSOutlineView based on the RecyclerViewAdapter.
https://github.com/willybaer/WDTreeList
Peace up
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I'm struggling to understand how am I meant to interact with the "graph" and "calculator" stuff from the mediapipe library. More specifically, I'd like to write some Android code that uses landmarks from the holistic (pose + hands in my case) solution, with the final goal of writing a flutter application that compiles both for Android and iOS.
I've managed to build a few of the sample apps (thanks to docker), and I think I roughly understand what the graphs do. However, I don't understand how to interact with them from within the code. The Hello World! for Android tutorial doesn't really explain this. There are examples that include this type of behaviour (e.g. here), but I don't really know where is all the required information coming from (e.g. how would I find out the right functions and string constants to get holistic landmarks?)
For example, in Python I could get data via something like holistic.process(image).pose_landmarks, and then compute e.g. position or angle of hips. And as far as I can see there are some similar Android API-s available, although not for all solutions - including holistic. So what if I don't want to wait for the API-s development, and want to use the graphs instead? That part is not so clear.
As a bonus, please do feel free to drop any links which further explain/document the "graph" and "calculator" stuff I've mentioned earlier, as I've not used anything like this before and find it a little difficult to google.
Thanks.
I've realised there are docs available: https://google.github.io/mediapipe/framework_concepts/framework_concepts.html
Not sure how I've missed this...
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.
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 have an Android App and I would like to start putting non-intrusive advert into the app. However, I have the benefit of knowing exactly what products I would like to put in these adverts (which will basically be amazon "similar products" type things and a few other suppliers). Is there any ad-engine out there that will allow me to do this? The ones I see already just put what they think are suitable.
I have scoured and I can't find an example of this... Any ideas? Should I just bite the bullet and write my own classes to do this ?
Heh - I always seem to be answering my own questions- I don't do that deliberately but I figured if anybody else has the same Q then I might as well put it here.... Anyway, I've found an open source library called "AdWhirl" ( www.adwhirl.com ) which enables you to plug in your own adserver etc etc. I will be using / adapting this for my purposes... (or at least trying to).
I've been through the Android tutorials - these do a good job of introducing how we can hand-roll an Android user-interface. Actually, I do not need that level of control right now... I'm looking for something simpler...
I'd like to make an Android app which will mainly contain a number of standard UI widgets, nothing particularly fancy. Having done some VB development a long time ago (yes, I know it's crap!) - I particularly like the ability to paint user-interfaces with an interface designer and then add in the relevant callbacks via the IDE. I'm using Eclipse, so for now solutions requiring net-beans or other IDEs are not particularly helpful.
I'm well aware that this practice often produces sub-optimal code, and less than beautiful interfaces. That's not really a concern here. I just need to produce a certain effect quickly in order to prove a concept. There will be plenty of time later on for optimization if my idea is good enough.
If you create a layout xml file you get "drag/drop" for the activity layout. It's not perfect, but you should be able to accomplish what you're asking for.
How you were used to VB development won't work out for you.
You will have to create your interface in XML, and put events to the objects by code. There is DroidDraw but it won't get you further then the plain inbuilt IDE of Eclipse.
When creating XML layouts think like it a HTML layout, nested objects, tables/linearlayouts etc...