What are the possibilities to develop android apps with custom styled widgets (by widgets I mean gui elements like buttons, boxes, menus). I want to develop android apps which don't use the standard look and feel of android. What are the widget libraries available? Are there any other ways to achieve this?
One of the possibilities would be to use html and phonegap and style the app with css. But I'm looking for a non-html and phonegapesque way to achieve this.
Look for example at the apps mentioned on the following page:
http://androidquark.com/top-6-best-alternative-photography-apps-instagram/
did they draw their widgets themselves? Or can such effect be achieved using the themeing mentioned in one of the answers?
You can customize your widgets just about any way you wish. For example, buttons are easy to customize by using ImageButton, and assigning it to any graphic you wish. Here's an example of custom "buttons" in a palette in a soon to be released update to an app of mine...even the crayons are buttons.
You can find a collection of them here:
https://github.com/mingyuan-xia/DevAndroidQuickly
Related
I am new to Android development and i am wondering about one thing. I want to create a simple list like descriped here: https://www.google.com/design/spec/components/lists.html#lists-specs
I cannot believe, that i have to implement it all by myself. Every ImageView, TextView with all their paddings and textsizes and so on. Is there something i overlooked? Is there a simple way like ready-to-use layouts?
If i want to use Material Design in a Web project, i could go to https://material.angularjs.org/latest/demo/list and create a list by just copy and paste the sourcecode. Does something like that exist for Android too?
No, you have to implement the view for a single item and android uses it as template. You can use a build-in list item only if you are showing String values.
Android developers sometimes also have to be UI developers.
You can check this tutorial: http://www.vogella.com/tutorials/AndroidListView/article.html
Have in mind that Material design in Android is slightly different than Material design for Web.
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 have created an Android app using the standard controls available. It seems that most apps on the market have their own set of controls. It generally looks much better that the standard controls. How do I create better looking control? Can I just apply a theme or should I overwrite the onDraw method? For instance, there is a problem with the default android spinner control details here .
adding custom images is the best way to have more eye-catching GUI, use colorful & meaningful images to your application to appeal users. Custom theme's and styles are helpful too.....
You can apply different themes and styles on the one hand or work with 9patch-drawables - have a look here for details and examples
I'm trying to get my app to blend in as much as possible with the "standard" with the rest of my android device. It's a stand-alone app, not integrated with the OS or anything, I just want it to look familiar.
The area I'm interested in is the "settings" screen. If I look at Android's standard settings screen, it's well spaced, perfect font size, with neat pin stripes between the menu items.
How do I do that? Is that a ListView? Is it done with a regular LinearLayout?
I would love to be able to replicate the look & feel in my app. Can anybody assist?
And it's not just the Adroid OS. it's most of the "professional" apps out there:
Many thanks
Actually, this is directly part of the Android source code, so I would strongly advise you to take a look in its structure. See the Android Settings tutorial for more info.
Settings are created from the SettingsActivity (which extends the PreferenceActivity, you might want to look this too), which in their turn have their layout based on the following xml files:
preferences.xml
preference.xml
Things are quite strongly interlocked so it needs some reading...
AFAIK its a ListView. by implementing a custom ListView, you can achieve similar effect.
Moreover, you'll have to follow the Icon Design Guidelines to create such icons for ListView rows
I came across this app and I wonder how was it developed on android (Cause it looks so much like an iphone app), see this screenshot.
Anyone have any idea how to accomplish that type of look on Android?
That's just a matter of styling after all. In general, I would consider it to be discouraged to make your Android app look like an iPhone app. Every platform has its own UX standards, and Android's standards are different from iPhone's. That quite obviously also reflects in the user interface.
Anyhow, you may want to read this article about Android themes and styles. It should get you going with defining own widget styles and stateful drawables to implement custom buttons.
This app obviously uses customized ListViews, ButtonView on the bottom of the screen.
Theses are pretty much standard and common in android apps.
Here is how to create custom components:
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/custom-components.html