I want to learn if there is an easier way to create a UI for Android. For example, for web design, we can convert psd to html. For Android programming, is there a solution like that or a tool that we can use easily?
Unfortunately, no. Additionally, any automated tool to convert PSD to HTML will not end well for anything but the most simple layouts. If you're talking about just using Photoshop as a layout design tool then you can use the same process with Android if you like. There's no technical limitation there.
ADT includes a visual editor, but I can't say it's very good. I'd highly recommend just learning the layout APIs and getting good at editing the XML.
Update:
It turns out that Google has recently provided a number of stencils to help with this designing process. It's still not a UI editor, but it might help with sketching things out.
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I am searching for more then 2 days and now I decided to ask here.
Is it possible to convert Android axml (the same as xml) template to Xamarin.Form's xaml template.
I am not good with template. That way I need some transformer tool but I can not find it. Or a good docs how to do it or what to change.
Is this even possible?
Even if you could find such tool, I'd advise you not to use it because there is no direct translation between what Android can do and what Xamarin.Forms can. Since Forms is meant to run on multiple platforms, it has a much smaller scope and hence not all Android Views have a Forms counterpart.
If your template is simple, translating it by hand wouldn't be hard. If your template is complex, a tool wouldn't translate it efficiently
I'm a new Android developer and I need to create an Android application which looks like Apple's App store (on both phone and tablet).
I'm a bit familiar with Native layout designer in Eclipse (ADT) and I find it really hard to design such an amazing UI.
I've searched a lot and I've found some web-based UI frameworks such as Phonegap and Chocolatechip-UI. Are these frameworks capable of designing such apps or not? Or do you suggest something else?
Thnx in advance
This question does not have a right or wrong answer. It really depends on how complex your UI is. How sleek you want it to be.
If your UI is pretty but simple and does not require very complex animations you could go for PhoneGap. however, if you have got very complex UI and want very sleek animations I suggest you use the native APIs.
This however, may change in the near future as web technology is improving really fast :)
I have many applications which has great GUI like Any.do, alarm clock from doubletwist etc. I was wondering are ll these applications developed using standard eclipse way using java and xml. I was not able to figure out how can i develop such type of GUI using eclipse xml?
All Android apps with a good UI use java & xml.
The only difference is that good apps need a LOT of work and sometimes a custom implementation of some Android Elements.
xml files catering to the different formfactors is the best way to implement a rich app (in fact I don't think there is any other valid way) :
-They allow you to separate the layouts from the code as much as possible.
-They allow you to treat specific form factors independently.
Additionally, Great apps often re-implements some of the basic UI elements. For exemple the implementation of the actionbar in Flipboard allow them to apply their flipping effect to it, something that you cannot do with the basic ActionBar.
Any.do has just been updated and I have not checked this last version yet, but the last time I tried the app, their implementation was not really good. Buttons were far too cramped in the ActionBar and their custom ActionBar was very slow (more than 1 second to acknowledge a tap).
Additional thoughts : sometimes these beautifully designed apps tend to ignore at least some of the Android conventions. It is a really bad idea : you can create a very beautiful app but if its UI elements are totally different from what users encounters in other Android apps it will just make the overall use of the app confusing. imho the best way to create a great app (both visually & functionally) is to use Holo as a design base that needs to be enriched and do not :
-make something totally opposite to the design conventions of the platform just because you think it is good.
-Use a basic android design block in a totally different way that what it is intended for, it will utterly confuse your users.
-Apply another platform conventions.
-Invent your own rules because "you are strenghtening your brand by having the same design on ios, android and your website". You are just being lazy.
a good starting point is obviously the official design site. android niceties is a good source of inspiration. Holo Everywhere & Android UI UX are very interesting sites in order to get more thoughts on how to improve existing apps.
Recently I've been building an app using eclipse and the android xml editor for the layout/visual design of the app. I finished most of the code for the app and now i want to design the interface so its more usable and looks much better than standard buttons. Does anyone know of any tutorials or software or really any way to do this. All i could think of was use photoshop to create icons for the button and such but maybe there is a better way to go about designing the user interface of an app than using images from photoshop?
Hope I explained that well enough, Let me know if you need clarification.
Some general Android UI design tips:
Filthy Rich Android Clients - Romain Guy
Google I/O 2010 - Android UI design patterns
Android UI Design Tips - Slideshow
I've been through the Android tutorials - these do a good job of introducing how we can hand-roll an Android user-interface. Actually, I do not need that level of control right now... I'm looking for something simpler...
I'd like to make an Android app which will mainly contain a number of standard UI widgets, nothing particularly fancy. Having done some VB development a long time ago (yes, I know it's crap!) - I particularly like the ability to paint user-interfaces with an interface designer and then add in the relevant callbacks via the IDE. I'm using Eclipse, so for now solutions requiring net-beans or other IDEs are not particularly helpful.
I'm well aware that this practice often produces sub-optimal code, and less than beautiful interfaces. That's not really a concern here. I just need to produce a certain effect quickly in order to prove a concept. There will be plenty of time later on for optimization if my idea is good enough.
If you create a layout xml file you get "drag/drop" for the activity layout. It's not perfect, but you should be able to accomplish what you're asking for.
How you were used to VB development won't work out for you.
You will have to create your interface in XML, and put events to the objects by code. There is DroidDraw but it won't get you further then the plain inbuilt IDE of Eclipse.
When creating XML layouts think like it a HTML layout, nested objects, tables/linearlayouts etc...