I am trying to put together a fake UI for an iOS and Android device without actually creating all that tedious UI work. Is there a way to mockup the UI from the images somehow? We have the Photoshop designs and mockups so far.
Are there any tools? I've checked Titanium and ForgedUI. While its a fairly simple concept I still think its an overkill to create all that. for instance I have to slice my PSD for the buttons. Plus the data feed has to come from a URL etc.
I just want something similar to Balsamiq Mockups linked screens one to another for an actual demo of a bunch of screens. We want to test the navigation, the fonts and the product concept while development is getting the product ready.
Thanks in advance!
The easiest way would be to use HTML. If you already have Photoshop mockups, you can simply export those to (retina quality) PNG images and add some image maps for navigation. If you add this site to your homescreen, you will have a pixel-perfect preview without Safari's navigation bar.
However, iOS apps depend heavily on animations. If you're going for a native UI anyway, you should consider creating a "real" UI prototype, using actual UIControl elements. While this is more work, it allows for much better UI evaluation.
For wireframing, a couple of options:
For high-fidelity mockups, I would do it in Interface Builder and storyboard, like JustSid recommended. Just don't do the tedious work of hooking up the UI elements.
You could look at tools like Adobe Proto. I've never tried it, but it seems like it might be an option.
For my super-quick, low-fidelity mockups (e.g. digital equivalent of the "back of the envelope" mockups), I personally use my iPad, a stylus, and a drawing package like Sketchbook Pro (use whatever drawing package you want, but I like one with layers). I also put blank device images on my iPad, too.
So, I open up my drawing package on my iPad, start a new drawing using a picture of an iPhone device as the starting point, drop on a new layer (so I can draw on a layer and either hide or discard that layer to instantly get back to the image of the blank device image), and just draw what I want my UI to look like on this new layer. This works great for brainstorming sessions. There's no automatic bridge from this conceptual, low-fidelity mockup to an actual Xcode storyboard, but I can draw a user interface mockup in seconds. I do this not only for brainstorming with designers, but also for fleshing out my own conceptual ideas, myself, too.
Related
I would like to add "advanced" animations to my mobile apps. Something like this one:
(I have slowed down the animation to 30% to make the effects more visible)
I am working both with iOS 10+ and Android. However, for now iOS is more important to me so let concentrate on this.
Creating the first part of the example animation (fading in book, envelope, etc.) using basic UIAnimations would be possible but already quite difficult (e.g. the parallax effect of the shadows). I have now Idea how to create the second part with the paper stacks.
Sure, this could also be done using UIAnimations but it would be insanely complex, wouln'd it?
So, how to get such animations into an app?
Are there any tools, formats, etc. to create such animations outside of Xcode and to import them? I only know GIF to animate images but this a quite old and limited format.
The app I found these animations in seems to control them very precisely. For example it controls when an animation starts. Additionally the animations looks great on different devices in different sizes and resolutions.
How to do this?
You can create the animation from "After Effects" and run it through Lottie.
Lottie renders "After Effects" animations natively on Android and iOS, Web, and React Native
You can refer this tutorial for more info.
So I'm on my first android project and I'm implementing a native app. One of the components is to book a seat on a seating map.
General specifications:
Handle venues that have different seating layouts and amount of seats, over 200
The seats can have different sizes and shapes, i.e. large round VIP seats and standard square seats. Imagine small round stadium with a lot of custom seating and different orientation, with a stage in the middle. (I have an image but can't post because I don't have enough reputation)
What I have tried so far:
Created custom seat class with size, seat number, orientation and seat type
Used a StaggeredGridLayout and a view-adapter to load each of these objects dynamically from a DB onto this layout.
My concerns: No matter how much I was worked on it, it never came out the way I wanted. Basically, I think this is better for grid maps with one sized objects like bus seats placed in the distance between each other and doesn't have a huge irrelevant object in the middle like a stage.
I was thinking about changing directions completely after doing some research: Using webview? Each venue would be a web page, that would be linked from the venue object from the DB. Then in that web page, I could make this sort of venue a lot easier because I could just place out this layout manually and style with different div elements or make an interactive javascript map, attach a button and make a call using Jquery/Javascript to my native android app.
What are your opinions, is this a feasible solution?
To be honest, an interactive seat map development was the most challenging task I have ever had in my development life. But some how I have done it for an asymmetric seat plan.
This type of work can be achieved in following two ways.
1. Using GPU rendering - Much easier process as almost every device has GPU by default. It detects the interaction point and check it's RGB value to detect the right path has been interacted and return this through client interface (with some drawbacks). e.g: Webview interacting Js interface in android and others.
2. Using CPU based drawing - Draw each and every path on the canvas and repeatedly it need to check the touched/interacted point is inside the paths or not. It will use more the CPU if paths are more complex to render/draw on the canvas for every single interaction. (hug CPU usage and some other constraints)
I am tired of searching some library in android which is very useful like Macaw in iOS development. This library handles the interactive path inside a svg file and help to interact with the client side.
Anyways for me, neither of the two options are not feasible though. I will go with importing/downloading .svg file to your android application and make it interaction using JavascriptInterface in your app. Unfortunately, this is less worse solution that I have found out so far.
UPDATE:
Here is my approach to make it workable. See my medium blog post. Hope it will help you.
I'm fairly new to Android and I'm working on an application in which one particular section involves a more advanced UI interface than what you would normally create with the stock UI components. I've read through most of the SDK tutorials and I get the basics but I can't see how to implement something like this. I'm not looking for any code, just some advice on what technologies I should be reading about to achieve this.
Here is a mockup:
So basically at the top there is a thumbnail strip that the user can flip through. Clicking on a thumbnail will perform some action. I'm pretty sure there's a stock control for this.
Underneath that I need to be able to create a composite image that can be pinch zoomed and panned and has hotspots that can be clicked (tapped) on. For example, an image of the solar system, in which the background would be static, but the planets need to be placed at runtime and need to be clickable, and the whole thing needs to be pan/zoomable. Support for very minimal animation (eg slow planet rotation) would be a plus, but not necessary. I'm at a loss on what I would achieve this with.
Finally, there are three pull-out panes that contain other content, such as images, menu items, and other media. Basically these just need to be containers in which I can place any other UI content.
I've done some basic Activities so far with simple forms, so I understand the basic workflow of Android, but I'm just not sure what to look at to achieve something like this. Is this a good candidate for a SurfaceView? Is there something else I should look at? I have been a bit afraid to get involved with OpenGL, since I don't really have a 3D background, and I still want to be able to use native components (buttons, listboxes, etc) without having to re-implement them in OpenGL.
Have a look at this for the slides:
http://developer.android.com/training/animation/screen-slide.html
as for the thumbnails you can use a linear layout, with some imageviews and buttons.
A newbie question.
I am a newcomer to Java/Android (even UI development) .
My test apps look a little drab even though they do what the intend to do (with respect to app functionality).
Apart from Java, what are other technology needed for graphic rich app (oval 3d buttons etc).
PS: I did a lil research on this before coming here and found most of the questions were asked with respect to game development.But I am not interested in game development though.
In my history of making nice looking apps it usually all comes down to positioning the buttons and other things nicely and making custom images for buttons. If you want to simplify some things try using LIBGDX's UI tools. They allow a somewhat simplified way to load in custom images and scale/position them according to screen size.
I want to create professional looking GUI for Android application. Something more than just raw widgets which I'm taught to use in countless tutorials in the web.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any source of information how to customize those widgets and create better looking GUI.
Examples could be: http://android.appstorm.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/calorific-sc.jpg
or http://android.appstorm.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/chomp-sc.jpg
How are such GUIs created? If you could point me out to some tutorials on it, I would be really thankful!
Greetings,
Bart
There's nothing in those examples that looks like it couldn't be made from standard components. For instance the second screen of that calorific application is just a background image for the window with a list and a button with a background image as well. The first image could easily be done with just buttons and background images for views as well.
TLDR: Split the view into rectangles, assume that these are all standard components with images as backgrounds unless they seem to have nonstandard interactions.
Those are called custom components.
You will need to do a fair amount of work to get the look you want. (compared to using system components).
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/custom-components.html
Edit
Bone up on your Google-fu Bart!
http://www.google.com/search?q=custom+components+android+tutorial