Android User Interface - Are tabs at the bottom the best approach? - android

I am creating an app that provides users information about a building that the app is being designed for. For example it will tell the user the location of the building, hotels/restaurants/cafes nearby and some other useful information.
I will be creating seperate activities to carry this out, so an activity to tell user the location and maybe contain a map, an activity listing hotels and an activity listing nearby cafes etc.
My problem is that I am not sure how to design the interface for this. I was thinking of having tabs at the botton of the screen where each tab opens the corresponding activity. Is this a good way to do it or is there a better way?
Thanks

This is really a UX (user experience) decision, not a coder decision. You are probably asking this question on a wrong site.
I recommend you look around how other apps have solved a similar problem, to get ideas what is possible. Then pick a solution that you like best.

You might want to ask that at UX
Personally I think Tabs are a quite intuitive way to let the user choose between dedicated views/activities - especially if they are labelled with distinct icons

Tabs is always a clean solution.
Maybe something like a dashboard would also be nice. (Pattern 3 in my link)
This link covers some things that may be useful in further development.
Android Dev UI Development

Right now i can think of some other solutions
Use a gesture to swap to another activity
Use a pair of arrow buttons at the bottom
But your solution seems nicer

Related

why search functionality is on separate screen rather than on same screen in apps?

I am bit confused and i could not find answer to my question. Almost all the mobile application try to take us to different page or screen when we try to search. Can anybody explain me the philosophy behind taking user to a new screen on search rather searching on same screen and refreshing data?
Any links or examples to clear my doubt would really appreciable.
Android Provides a SearchInterface which helps a developer to easily integrate search functionalities and for that you have to create a SearchableActivity that is why everyone uses a different activity for that,
more info at https://developer.android.com/training/search/setup.html

Split screen concept for tablet in android

I am developing an application for tablet which has Split screen functionality,as we see an Gmail Application. My Left layout is fixed and my right one will change as per the buttons clicked on it.
I googled a lot for the solution,I found that we need to use Fragments for performing these.
Can anyone help me in solving these things.
Thanks
You could have explored d.android.com but now I would suggest you to refer it whenever you are facing problems/issues or looking for basic help.
Now, As you want to provide split functionality kind of UI in Android, check: Building a Flexible UI and I would suggest you to learn and explore Fragments.
Yes, you got that right. Fragments is the solution here. Using Fragments is easy and it's lifecycle is similar to that of an Activity. First get an overview of what a Fragment is here. Go over some of the tutorials about the use of Fragments : here and here.
this is a working example of what you want to achieve, good luck!
https://github.com/Jachu5/Android-UIprojects/tree/master/FragmentSplitedScreen

Android Hierarchical Navigation

I'm trying to get an example or a starting reference on how to develop a drill down structure. The best example I can give is, how Android navigates through it's own folder structure. Here is a screenshot to illustrate my point:
Some things I would like to point out:
I will have know knowledge of how deep the structure will run
Minimum API level 10
Could someone please point me in the right direction.
Many thank in advance!!
To those you are wondering how I managed this, I basically call the same activity, just with the parent ID (which will be located within the bundle). This way I can fill the ListView with the parent ID provided and let my BaseAdapter sort out which UI to display.
I don't know if the was the best way of doing it, but it worked for me.
Kind regards,
IMO, technically there is no limit on the structure depth. But for the sake of design, good user interaction with the app as well as for codes maintenance, I suggest 3 to 5 level deep is enough. If you must go further than that perhaps you should re-design the app.
And you may also use breadcrumb to improve structure visibility.
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/FragmentBreadCrumbs.html

how to make this UI?

So I've been looking around for days now and I can not find any tutorials on how to make a UI similar to this.
I want to do something similar to this where the buttons are intents and go to my activities instead of the home screen activities(phone, market, contacts, etc). Does anyone have any idea on how to start this?
This is complicated because it uses 3D camera transformation, it is not really for beginners but you can have a go at it:
Android-3D-Carousel

Android - first launch interactive tutorial

I'm writing a new app for android and I would like to implement also a first launch tutorial. In particular, the tutorial has to be interactive. Basically, after a user registers to the service, a minimum settings will be required.
I'd like something like today we have into Google Apps, like Sheets, Docs and so far. The exception there is that those tutorials have the aim to explain how the app works. Here I want to have something where user can input some data.
I was looking at ShowcaseView but seems to be deprecated and old in style.
So here the question is: what is the best way to implement that? ViewPager?
I also had a look to this other question, but it did not help too much.
Any advice is really appreciated.
EDIT: I have found this other nice alternative. AppIntro It seems what I was looking for. :)
There are few I found by quick searching Github:
https://github.com/Seishin/showcaseview-android
https://github.com/worker8/TourGuide
https://github.com/amlcurran/ShowcaseView
I'm pretty sure you can find the right one for you ;)
You can do it in several ways that really depends on you and your app. Basically you can create a "Boarding" experience with ViewPager that will go thru the main screen of your app (with static images for example) where you explain the user what goes on in your app. The other way way is an interactive tutorial as the user already landed into your app - you can achieve this with something like Showcase (I'm pretty sure that there are libs on GitHub that are still maintained).
I would recommend Roman Nuriks Wizard Pager code on Github as a starting point. It's not so much a library as a sample code showing you how to do what you want.
The general approach is to use a ViewPager with some form of navigation buttons to move the user forwards and backwards through the pager Fragments.
https://github.com/romannurik/Android-WizardPager

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