I will like to develop an application in Android 4 that shows some gauges, text, images, etc.
It will display information read from sensors connected to IOIO board (hardware):
- temperature gauges (linear and angular)
- horizontal horizon (10Dof IMu)
- speed (vertical gauge)
- altitud (vertical gauge)
- etc...
Basically like a Garmin G1000 but the horizontal horizon will be displayed in a square (not all the screen). For example this image: Garmin G1000 image
The screen will contain text and graphics. Some graphic may change high frequently (horizontal horizon, speed, etc), but other no (temperatures, fuel qty, etc).
I was wondering what is the best approach to do it: draw all the screen with canvas, or put text with Textview and graphics with transparent bitmaps, or other options.
I will like if someone could say me what he think about the best approach to design it and to organize the visual components.
Thanks in advance.
With android, your design space is quit limited. So for something like that i would suggest nesting some layouts. You'd set one for the background and others for what ever function you wanna do. I also suggest planning what you wanna display and what layout is best optimized for the function.Eg:
Use a relative layout to set the landscape background
Use the Liner layout for the ruler functions on the sides
Use grid layouts for maps maybe
Use Split action tabs for the options at the bottom
Use menus for calibration settings
Use Relative layouts for all the funny gauges moving about and textboxes and stuff.
Then from there it's a matter of making everything work.
Here are some links on layouts:
Link 1 Link 2
Related
I am trying to create an android app where I have a single relatively big button in the middle (the light blue in the picture) and it is surrounded by other smaller buttons as shown in the picture (some of small buttons might be visible or invisible based on some criteria).
I started with the RelativLayout setting the big on in the center and making the rest placed in relation to it, but it is a miss and the central button get shifted and doesn't stay in the center. I tried placing them in FrameLayout and used margin to adjust their locations, that worked the best however, the spacing changes on different screen resolutions.
So what is the best way to achieve such layout that will look consistent on any device?
Android's Percent Support Library allows you to use proportions to lay out your views, which may allow you to get closer to your goal.
http://developer.android.com/tools/support-library/features.html#percent
I am wondering how I would design a calculator with graphics similar to the following: Design help for Calculator App or https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.Appsys.PanecalST.
The key requirements:
The buttons must be squared (it can pop out etc. but squares are more aesthetically pleasing than rectangles).
It must be device compatible and retain square buttons upon orientation change
My problem is that Relative formatting (as I attempted) disorients the layout in different devices and is not as nice as I hoped. (i.e. trying to design the button to harbor no empty space in one device using relative instructions. One idea I fancy is putting a center button and orienting the others above left etc. so at the very least, no empty space is in the center.
Below is the designs I made:
I prefer the first image but I neglected 0 (only buttons for 1-9). How would attempt at transforming these designs to code?
*I think I may use ImageButtons. I will include images based on density but how would I account for different screen sizes?
First of all, for your calculator, use LinearLayout.
Link: Documentation will be found here
Secondly, To Support multiple screen,
This documentation will help, documentation1, documentation2
What would I do in this situation?
First of all, I would use the LinearLayout as my primary layout and give it an orientation > Vertical instead of RelativeLayout. This LinearLayout is for the whole screen (The output, the numbers and other functions). Then for each line, say for the output screen, I would put it in another LinearLayout (Orientation Horizontal) inside the previous LinearLayout (NestedLayout). For numbers in each row, I would use a new LinearLayout.
For the second problem of yours, I would use buttons instead of images as images take large space in perspective of buttons which will unnecessary increase the app size. To support my button for multiple screen, I would use Weight option in android for buttons. This stackoverflow answer has a nice description.
I hope it helps.
Cheers mate!
I still have trouble understanding the possibilities of Scaling my UI in a responsive way in my Air Mobile App. On the web I'm familiar with it and the use of media-queries.
I dont want to scale my whole UI up and down or even stretch it (e.g: I use the camera in one DisplayObjectContainer, so this would be really bad for the performance to scale this.)
I currently go down the road defining all the container sizes by percent, but that is getting pretty ugly pretty fast as it leaves me with 68.95px values. I think this will get me in trouble one day as blocks appear not crisp anymore. If I round the values, I might have 1px gaps between Elements.
Currently I have this Setup. The idea is, to give every main Component a (maybe invisible) empty background-child. These can then deformed by width & height by any desire. The inner Elements of any Element (button, logo, etc) are not affected by the deformation of the bg and can then be arranged accordingly (as I now have position and size of this container - like in css).
But this does not feel like it is the right way.
Is there a magic lib/class I dont use currently and that allowes me to build in hard pixel for a defined setup and behaves appropriate when it comes to different stageWidths, DPI, etc?
What are your approaches for this problem?
I need expertise advice/approach for starting screen development in android.
I got a couple of screens from my customer and i need to develop them.
I went through lot of tutorials and understood about supporting multiple resolutions and sizes all that is fine, but i want to understand basic things like how to properly place the UI elements. Should we need to use any tools like photoshop for measuring units like top bottom right left etc and place the UI element in xml or just by approxiamtion we will place the UI element.
For example consider this screen https://d13yacurqjgara.cloudfront.net/users/137442/screenshots/1234960/attachments/166804/Login-screen.png.
for ex How you will place the user name and password edit texts. I mean how much of top left bottom margins will be used. is that just approximation or need to be measured using tools like photoshop.
Say i used photoshop and got the values in pixes if i convert them to dp and use those values in layout will they support for other screen sizes??
are there any tools which can take the screen iamge which i posted above as an input and generate the android layout from it.
You don't need Photoshop to measure the units. The Android SDK has several layouts with their accompanying properties and options that will allow you to pretty much achieve any UI implementation. imho there are not tools that will 'take a screen image and generate the android layout from it'.
I have a client who wants me to build an Android version for their existing iPhone app. The design of the iPhone doesn't use any native iPhone elements. It's basically some sort of grid with containing images, buttons, text, etc. Of course it was easy to make the iPhone app because of the fixed pixels widths/heights. The basic grid that defines a screen is loaded via a XIB file, and I load the custom buttons in the right containers in the grid by specifying the exact coordinates.
Then comes Android...
Our client wants to target 3 specific tablets (1024x600). They have given us designs for a ~600x980 portrait version of the app. It is not recommended to use AbsoluteLayout in Android. What is the easiest way to make sure that I can scale it on different devices but that it will look like the given design on the 3 target tablets.
One idea I had (which I'm not sure about whether I can implement it) was:
Get screen width in pixels and height
Based on width/height ratio of the design, pad with bars on top/bottom or left/right
Still do an AbsoluteLayout based on this information
I'd rather not do it this way because it sounds involved and counter to the Android way of doing things. Another issue that is created by scaling is the following. There is a bar of buttons that have a lines separating them. These lines are 4 pixels wide. Obviously, when you start scaling, this is going to mess this up completely. I can't seem to find much information about this s
You probably want to start here:
http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html
But quick points are probably
Do not use an absolute layout. Your life will become terrible
Handle sizes in density independent pixels so they will scale properly on different devices
Use ninepatch images so that when images stretch they will stretch in the proper regions maintaining your 2px borders ect.
Take advantage of the different resource folders for images at different densities (drawable-mdpi vs drawable-hdpi) and layouts at different sizes (layout-small vs layout-large). The latter will allow you to have separate layouts for your tablet devices.
Best of luck :-)