I noticed that with every iteration of the Android platform, the buttons and UI components keep looking slicker and slicker.
Besides API changes I want to be able to adopt the latest buttons (such as spinners with the bottom-right corner as an arrow), or Jelly bean icons, across all versions of Android where my application is used. How is this usually accomplished?
I want to be able to adopt the latest buttons across all versions of Android where my application is used.
The Holo Everywhere library is a popular choice to do this.
Related
We have an App for both iOS and Android platforms. Currently our designers have designed similar User Interface for two of them, just have minor differences. Since those two shared lots of common features like buttons, text fields, etc, having similar interface works for both platforms. However, the most obviously differences between iOS and Android (from my point of view), are UINavigationBar in iOS and ActionBar in Android.
Now our interface for Action Bar and Navigation Bar looks like this:
This is followed UINavigation Design that have Title in centre. I'm just wondering should I keep the title centre in Android's Action Bar so two platforms will have similar interface or should I follow Android's design guide (Title next to left icon) for better Android User Experience?
Per Pure Android:
Most developers want to distribute their apps on multiple platforms. As you plan your app for Android, keep in mind that different platforms play by different rules and conventions. Design decisions that make perfect sense on one platform will look and feel misplaced in the context of a different platform. While a "design once, ship anywhere" approach might save you time up-front, you run the very real risk of creating inconsistent apps that alienate users.
This advice definitely applies to the app bar, which has very clear design guidelines as part of the Material Design guide, which is the driving force behind Android design at this time and is supported across all API 7+ devices via AppCompat.
See: https://developer.android.com/design/index.html.
This is somewhat opinion-based, but it is probably best to adhere to the Android styles where applicable, rather than shoot for consistency between you iOS and Android versions. If you want your users to have a comfortable, familiar experience, then keep in mind that they are probably most familiar with other apps on that specific device type.
An argument for consistency between Android and iOS would be (a) simpler to design for, (b) might be easier to test, (c) easier to support.
This all assumes you are building native apps. If you are making an HTML or hybrid app, a more device-neutral style might be acceptable.
I'm developing quite a few homescreen widgets and currently I have to install them on my emulator or my phone in order to preview the layout.
Is it possible to preview the layout in Eclipse? When I open the XML of my layout in the preview mode, it displays it as it it were an activity and therefore the scaling is entirely wrong.
You can use jimu as a plugin into Eclipse to achieve it. Jimu is a drag & drop style App creation tool for Android. That's the most suitable tool to allow you achieve what you have in mind to get WYSIWYG, as it will enable you to have live previews of Android layouts. You have also the option to use it with Eclipse, or with Android Studio or any other editor of your choice.
To avoid the need to compile-install-run, jimu Mirror gives you live previews of your app that update as you code.
As you can image, the most positive fact about Jimu is that it speeds up Apps development times.
Alternatively, you can use IntelliJ IDEA. IntelliJ IDEA also allows you UI layouts preview.
Thus allowing you achieve WYSIWYG. And equally IntelliJ IDEA gives you the option to integrate it with Eclipse. Of course, alternatively you may decide to simply completely to move to Intellij IDEA. It is available in a commercial edition as well as in a free open source community edition.
IntelliJ IDEA UI designer allows you to build application UI by dragging widgets from its side palette. In version 13 you can simultaneously preview the UI you’re creating on multiple devices, by just selecting Preview All Screen Sizes from the device drop-down. Preview displays all changes made through the UI designer or XML editor in real time.
Such tools for GUI implementation from Jimu and IntelliJ IDEA remembers a little bit Qt Designer, which is available also for Android. In fact, any approach that properly works, allowing interactive Android UI quick development, is a greatly welcome valuable tool for developers that should be well used to improve productivity.
At the top of the view in Eclipse switch to the Holo Panel theme. If you need your own theme attributes then create tour own theme override that parent's to this. Then you could choose that in the editor.
it displays it as it it were an activity and therefore the scaling is entirely wrong.
If it displays as an Activity, then create a dummy Activity that mimics the home screen. Then use a theme, or use an include tag to include the layout from your widget into the cell(s) of that larger dummy home screen.
This solution isn't ideal, but it should be able to give you a better approximation (if what you're looking for is just to tweak the layout of your widget).
I'm an amateur android programmer and I really like to code. My main difficulty is to make apps nice.
I came across a simple app, but at the same time, nice: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.linksaude.bulas
I would like to know if this app has been designed with some specific plugin/add-on for Eclipse or whatever. It seems to be so consistent and beautifully designed that there must be an answer to simplify the building process of such apps.
Thanks!
I think what you're impressed with is the consistent color theme of the application. It looks like its designers carefully overrode the default design of Android widgets with their own custom scheme.
There is NOT any plugin for development tools that will help you achieve this; however, there are many external tools.
Here is a tool to generate styles for the action bar (the navigation bar at the top):
http://jgilfelt.github.io/android-actionbarstylegenerator
A tool to generate custom colored Holo widgets: (Holo is the theme in modern Android platforms):
http://android-holo-colors.com/
And my #1 favorite resource for this type of customization, this website:
http://www.stylingandroid.com/
These three are more than sufficient to customize an interface like the one you linked to above. Good luck!
Though beauty is in the eye of the beholder, this will do the job.
http://developer.android.com/design/index.html
Welcome to Android Design, your place for learning how to design
exceptional Android apps.
There are some DevBytes videos on YouTube of how you make your app beautiful.
The result is an application which looks very modern and beautiful, you should have a look at those videos
I'v been running my app on android 2.3.3 while i was building it and everything was looking fine, I have a lot of edit text's in the app, ones for input and one for displaying answers, the ones for displaying answers are set to enabled false and that changed them a slightly different color on 2.3.3, which I liked.
Now when I ran the app on version 4.1.2 all the edit text were black and I cant see the numbers that are input, plus cant see spinners
Is there a way to achieve something similar on all versions, when I set the background color of the edit text it makes it square, and I prefer the rounded corners.
There is two option
set the targetsdkversion to your minimum sdk version. By that you will see the same as it will always show the theme of minimum sdk version
or create your own background selector for edittext.
Users will usually prefer (at least i do) having a consistent experience across apps, so that using the native look and feel is something that you should consider.
If you set the targetSdk to a low number, it makes the whole app use an outdated UI , plus it can create a full row of the menu button on devices that don't have a dedicated menu button.
Of course , if you wish to change it all to your own style (which might be more beautiful), you can also do it by either have styles or extend the views. There is even a nice holo-style-library called HoloEverywhere that you can use.
I want to port my application on all Android devices, and I want to have the right/left animation on the activities transition on all Android platform versions. I know that this feature is implemented in the 2.0 version. How can I implement this feature for the lower versions?
You can simulate it on lower versions by using ViewFlipper for example, but I would not suggest it if you have a lot of View elements on your UI because this requires all the Activities' code to be merged into a single Activity. With a lot of Views you'll max-out the CPU/GPU limits pretty easily. All you get is messy code and bloated XML files.
This is the effect - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZTiJmclaRc
My suggestion - just stick to what the platform API version offers by default and don't rape the hardware.