Benefits of native ActionBar vs custom implementation? - android

I would like to try and use the native Google ActionBar class for my application however, I would like to be able to change the left most image dynamically, disable the icon and center the title. I was wondering if this is possible of if I should implement my own ActionBar?
My reason for wanting to change the left most image (IE the navigation drawer indicator) is because I am using the navigation drawer but on some screens would like to display the up indicator instead.

Looking through the documentation for the ActionBarDrawerToggle, there is a method to enable/disable the navigation drawer icon (setDrawerIndicatorEnabled), when disabled it reverts to the home-as-up indicator.
Another option is to recreate the drawer in those specific screens you want the icon different and specify the new icon in the creation of the drawer, not sure if this would work though.
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/v4/app/ActionBarDrawerToggle.html

Here is the android guide which explains how to do this, but allow me to give a brief overview.
You do not have to have the app icon as the leftmost icon so in certain pages you can disable it by specifying another "android:logo" item in the XML file, or by simply diabling it entirely.
The android logo, which is what you are talking about as the "leftmost item", can have an onClickListener() set for it which is how you can change it simply to an uparrow image which you can download from google.

Related

Custom Button in React Navigation Wix Bottom Tab

I'm using React Navigation Wix for my App and I want to achieve something similar to the below design (Attached image).
Actually the problem with the wix is that we don't have the ability to customize too much things, we can config the text and the icon only.
Note that its hard for me to convert to the react navigation library right now.
Right now there is no way to add a custom component as Bottom Tab Bar in "react-native-navigation" by Wix.
But you can implement the approach briefly described here
disable bottom tabs showing
create your own tabs component
add it to every screen
get fun :-)
But you need to be aware that you will lose the default badge showing behavior (small red circles near the icon) provided by this lib.

Moving a view left of the screen

My android app UI have two parts- a menu bar (blue color) and content area (gray color).
Here red is the device screen.
The menu bar should open from left to right whene the hamburger menu is clicked.
I tried with ViewSwitcher but that shows only one view at a time.
What is the right method to implement it?
UPDATE: I am looking for the solution for API level 10 onwards.
In the newest version of the ADT you can select Navigation Drawer as navigation type when you create a new Activity. This automatically implements this type of navigation for you.
Alternatively, check out this tutorial: http://developer.android.com/training/implementing-navigation/nav-drawer.html
If you are happy with the navigation bar overlaying the content, then use the navigation drawer as suggested.
Alternatively check out:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.desarrollodroide.repos
There are many open source libraries that you can pick and test, and then decide which one to grab the code for.

Adding a custom navigation drawer action bar icon

I've implemented a navigation drawer, and it has the standard 3 lines going across.
I've been looking around for methods to change that icon, but I haven't found much luck. I really only want to make the lines more spaced out and longer (like in the playstore).
Any suggestions?
If I understand correctly, you're looking to change the
icon
There is a Navigation Drawer Indicator Generator in the Android Asset Studio.
The icon is available for download in the Android training lesson Creating a Navigation Drawer.
As far as I can tell, you can follow that tutorial and swap in whatever icon you'd like.

Custom Navigation Drawer

as I pursue my study on android app development I came across this app from apple and I was wondering if, is there a way to imitate the navigation drawer in this screen shot?!
See it's an expandable navigation drawer. a list view with some items that are expandable. Is there an actual way to imitate this on android?
Thank you very much again for all of your help.
You can recreate that drawer.
You can use the ExpandableListView within the Navigation Drawer. And of course you'll have to create your own parent and child item layouts for the listview. As well as appropriate styling. You can use tutorials to do this, first create the navigation drawer, then create the expandablelistview and put it within the navaigation drawer layout.
I'd also like to note on that screen shot, the drawer is incorrect. It should slide out below the action bar, over-top of the activity (like in the link). It should not slide the entire application window to the right like how some apps do.
Use a Custom ListView for this, see here for that: How To Create A Custom Listview - Android Example
Also, you will have to create specialized buttons that have a different look than standard holo buttons, see here for that: How to create custom button in Android using XML Styles
Finally, I do not believe it is possible to directly clone the navigation drawer, as the app you showed doesn't have an open sourced app (as far as I know).

Setting Navigation Icon on Android ActionBar

So I'm working on adding ActionBarSherlock and the Navigation Drawer to a project that previously implemented a custom (very poorly written) "action bar". Instead of using fragments and a backstack of activities for navigation, some activities show and hide different layouts. (That is, suppose I am in a list mode and then select a button to go into an edit screen. The app currently hides the list layout and shows another layout.).
So I've added actionbar sherlock and a navigation drawer to all the activities. I want to be able to programmatically switch the navigation icon from the 3 lines to the arrow when certain buttons are pressed.
I can't figure out how to do this though. Any ideas?
Thanks!
The solution to this problem is to use the method:
setDrawerIndicatorEnabled(boolean enable)
inside the ActionBarDrawerToggle class.
After:
drawer.setDrawerListener(toggle);
Use this code:
getSupportActionBar().setDisplayHomeAsUpEnabled(true);
getSupportActionBar().setHomeButtonEnabled(true);
getSupportActionBar().setHomeAsUpIndicator(R.drawable.select);
It depends how wedded you are to built-in actionbar artifacts. You can always redraw the current actionbar by inflating a layout of your choosing, then calling
getSherlockActivity().getSupportActionBar().setDisplayShowTitleEnabled(false);
getSherlockActivity().getSupportActionBar().setDisplayShowHomeEnabled(false);
getSherlockActivity().getSupportActionBar().setDisplayShowCustomEnabled(true);
// Inflate and do whatever you need to your view...
getSherlockActivity().getSupportActionBar().setCustomView(abView);
getSherlockActivity().getSupportActionBar().show();
When you want to go back to your standard (assuming you're using a DrawerLayout to do your navigation drawer), you can just set make a call to setDisplayShowCustomEnabled(false) (re-enable showHome and showTitle as you please).
As far as I know, customization of the back button can only be done via themes. Besides, swapping the drawer icon for the back icon (within the same Activity) doesn't make sense, since users would still be able to access the navigation drawer by sliding the left most edge to the right. It just wouldn't make sense.
If you absolutely need the back icon, then it would make the most sense to make that screen a new Activity since you would indeed be adding another "level" to the stack, which is what the back icon represents.

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