I have a ListPreference on my android application.
On phone 2.3.4, it has the 'downward triangle with a circle' icon on the right.
But when I run on the same app on Samsung Galaxy, it has no such icon. Can you please tell me how can I fix that?
Thank you.
The missing triangle is probably due to customizations that Samsung has made to Android. If you want to force the list preference to appear the exact same on each device regardless of the vendor you will probably have to subclass the ListPrefernce class and define exactly how you want it to appear, rather than using the definition that ships with the device.
Update I just noticed that you mention you are using a tablet in the title. I'm assuming you're using a Galaxy Tab 10.1 or 8.9. If that is the case the missing triangle is either due to Honeycomb or TouchWiz. If its a Honeycomb customization I wouldn't try to hack one in there.
It really is best for everyone if your app conforms to the UI standards put forth by the OS. Introducing inconsistencies in the UI tends to make users unhappy and can lead to interfaces that are difficult to use.
Related
I am building new Android app and i have question on the differences between how UI widgets looks in the emulator and how they look in my device (Samsung S2, OS 4.0.3).
When i run the app in the emulator buttons (BTW, and other UI widget) looks much more "elegant".. buttons (in number picker) are small arrow in blue/gray but in the device buttons (in number picker) are more "regular" (gray rectangle)
(sorry but I can not load pictures..)
my question is, how can i make the UI widget on my device looks like in the emulator?
Thanks,
Dudy.
I think it is the other way around - the emulator shows the default skin from Google, while your device shows what the manufacturer has customized (and burned into the operating system of your device).
So you may look into getting "Samsung skins" (if they exist) to make the emulator more close to the real device.
The nice UI you are talking about is probably the Holo Theme, which was introduced in Android HC, but some OEMs use customized Android Frameworks like Samsung(TouchWiz) or HTC(HTC Sense). If you want to use the same Theme throughout the big range of Android devices you can use third party libraries . A popular Theme, which brings pure Holo to older devices (2.3=<) is HoloEverywhere. If you use this Theme in your App you'll have the Holo Theme in most Android versions and on most devices.
Simple question,
I make an application for my phone (android froyo).
Is it will run on android froyo tablet ?
Or I must make some modification to make it work on tablet ?
Simple answer: It may run on the tablet - try.
Not so simple answer: It depends on whether you use some features of the phone and whether those features are available in your tablet. For example, if your tablet does not have GPS and you are developing location aware applications, that obviously is not going to work. Another thing to take care of would be the usability of the application. Your UI would most probably be designed with the phone's form factor in mind. That may not look exactly appealing on a large screen device like the tablet.
So long as you use the appropriate <supports-screen> tags in your Manifest.xml file, yes. However, I'd strongly suggest you go about making a tablet UI, because users don't like phone UIs stretched on a tablet screen. This document might help you with that.
I'm trying to make some of my applications available on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) devices. It would be helpful to know the different things to look for, as sort of a checklist.
What are the generic steps necessary to make an application available and functional on an Ice Cream Sandwich device? I'm not looking for every single potential API change to make, but any detail would be appreciated.
One thing I have encountered relating to usability is that if you have a fullscreen activity, to allow some way to exit it or go back since phones might not have hardware keys to send the back event. Basically, never assume that the user has hardware keys available.
Google also recently released a design guide for ICS available at http://developer.android.com/design/index.html
Well, as Blundell said, it should work without any problems. I have however, found one quirk while running ICS in the emulator with my apps (maybe this applied to Honeycomb as well, no idea).
Here it is - if you have an app widget, and you don't provide the android:previewImage attribute in the appwidget-provider configuration, your widget will not be visible in the "Widgets" tab. You can use an app that comes with the ICS emulator (Widget Preview) to generate this preview image.
I know this is not a technical related question.But i do not have any idea.I am going to develop a project which should be supported in both phone and tablet.Is it possible having one project working for both tablet and phone ?
Yes. The only thing you need to keep in mind where you keep your graphics. Because it will cause different problems if you do not treat and handle them depending on the screen size. Only thing matters is the android version. If you deploy your app in any phone or a tablet where the version is newer or equal to the target version it works. But of course you cant take a call or some other mobile functionality from a tablet if its not supporting that features.
You can use drawable-hdpi,drawable-mdpi and drawable-ldpi for the graphics(images which use in project) and also use layout with multiple screen by custom layout like layout-480x320 , layout-600x1024 etc. in layout you can custom screen xml file.
Do you have any idea what's the starting point to develop an UI for Android OS, similar with HTC SenseUI ?
Can I create that on top of Android or I need to get the Android source code ?
Thank you.
Florin Matincă
You'd need to modify the Android OS to some extent, but since Android is open source, that's not a problem.
The problem is getting it installed on phones - if you've noticed, the only companies that have custom UIs are also phone manufacturers, so they can just ship their phones with it installed. Also, if a new version of Android comes out, you'd need to get the new source, and modify most of it again.
Distribution would be a serious problem...
HTC Sense consist of a variety of functions.
Some like the Lock Screen can be implemented as normal programs. The start screen for programs can as well.
The systems setting for example can't be easily replaced without going into the android source code.
I have to disagree with xil3, there are some realy popular home screen replacements out there not restricted to a certain brand.
ADW.Launcher
LauncherPro
HelixLauncher
HelixLauncher2
All four are available on market place and therefor the distribution is simple.
HelixLauncher (and 2) are based on the Launcher from android itself, for which the sources are available as a git repository. This means you could use these sources to start your own Home Screen replacement.
So have fun!