I'm working on a project should have an ICS-ish design with the UI elements presented on these mockups:
The thing is that minSDK requirement is API 7. What would be the best way to approach it?
You can customize to get all of those UI elements and it's probably the best way to do it in this case.
Check out ActionBarSherlock, it's gonna help you with design 1-4.
For the last two you simply customize the theme to show the images that you wanted.
The Spinner design is going to be tricky I reckon since the selection in pre-honeycomb presents as a dialog and used up full screen. It's possible, but I just don't know the best way to do it yet.
Related
My question is not about how but is it OK to use a custom size for actionbar from the perspective of future releases of Android ?
Could using a custom size break the product in future releases ? or need more testing now and future ? What kind of things should I think of, before using a custom size ?
Our designer is iOS guy and is giving me designs with thin actionbar as in iOS. I want to know any technical reasons to use standard size before pushing back.
appreciate any responses.
No, there's no problem.
The ActionBar is now customizable with Toolbar. And Toolbar has been added to support library (which indicates that it's probably going to be used widely).
But as in if it's OK design-wise, you can take a look at Material Design specs to get more information.
I cannot find either one of these two views in the source, but have seen them both in many apps. Can anyone please tell me what they are called?
Thanks
The second one is an options menu from the action bar. I think it is implemented as a ListPopupWindow.
The first one is not part of the Android SDK, though there are various implementations floating around. Here is an example of one designed for use with Google Maps, for example. Here is one designed for the "quick actions" pattern.
I'm going to assume that they're custom made ones, so you won't find them in the standard Android libraries.
The second one I think is just the way that the default menu looks in ICS (and honeycomb for that matter). If you build for 4.0 and include the code for an options menu I think you'll get that UI by default. If you are looking to customize it check out this page http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/actionbar.html and pay close attention to the "Adding drop down navigation" section.
The first one is not a part of the android UI, that is something specific to the facebook app.
I like how the Android 3.0+ action bar looks, but I don't want it to be on top of the screen. Is there a way to move it to the bottom or to the side?
It is not possible to do so. At least not using public APIs. You could easily find a way to do it but your app would be inconsistent with other apps and likely to break with future updates of the OS.
I think you may have some luck if you delve deep enough into ActionBarSherlock's source code. Since that library creates an ActionBar for pre-HC devices, you may be able to just change the position where it appears. This isn't exactly the answer you were looking for, but it just might be able to solve your problem.
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 just mucking around with Android tablet stuff in 3.0. I have fragments set up to do the equivalent of UISplitViewController for iPad. Anyone know what the best solution to get something like the iPad UIPopOverController is?
I'm thinking the options are either a separate dialog or something in the Action Bar ...?
I haven't actually seen any Android tablets running 3.0 so not clear what the standard will be ...
Many thanks in advance
This may not be exactly what you are looking for because I'm not all that familiar with UIPopOverController but I think you can accomplish something similar using a Toast with a customized layout.
I would take a look at Creating Toast Notifications and see if it works for you.
Depending on the functionality needed it might work, otherwise you might need to look into trying to generate a modeless dialog with a custom layout.
As for your other question, yes options are generally stored in a separate activity within your application and following Honeycomb design the options activity would be accessible from the Action Bar and the options itself could be a fragment.
Its nothing official but I would crack open the source code to the contacts app for 2.0+ They emulate the popover UI using an Activity in a pretty creative way. It might be a little over kill as it was designed to be usable by any application not just itself. But it should help give you a nudge in the right direction.
Also depending on what the behavior you are looking for exactly a combination of fragments and action bar could be the way to go, but its not going to be as easy as iOS.