I'm making an app and I want a number of the activities to look like like the Xoom Honeycomb settings page (even though they would be showing stuff like images and videos).
http://static.intomobile.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/xoom-honeycomb-settings-11.png
Can most of this be done with a PreferenceActivity or does this involve a lot of custom layout design? Has anyone seen any good tutorials for this?
Thanks.
You cannot readily show "stuff like images and videos" in a PreferenceActivity. What you are looking at are a pair of ListFragments, AFAIK.
Related
I have been browsing the web for a while now and looking at different examples of how to implement a tab bar.
The problem I am having is deciding the correct approach to creating this feature. The option that seems most used is to have one main activity called MainActivity or something and using fragments as the tabs. This is all well and good and I have created an application like this fine.
The problem I am having is I am in two minds as to whether this is the right way to go about it as coming from an iOS development background it just doesn't seem right due to these tabs having different functions.
Any pointers would be great.
EDIT I have also looked into ActionBarSherlock but couldn't get to use it in a project as it kept coming up with errors and I couldn't find a thread that sorted the problems I was having out.
Disco
You should be using fragments, yes. There is an example of how to do it here: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/actionbar.html#Tabs
This "only" works with Tabs that are part of your Actionbar, though. Shouldn't be too much of a problem, because they usually should be part of your Actionbar. You can also manually move the tabs if you're not content with their location, or roll your own buttons that look like tabs.
Keep in mind that tabs in Android aren't quite the same beast as the tab bar is in iOS. They look similar and behave similar, but there are subtle conceptual differences in how they are supposed to be used. Don't use them for your basic app navigation, but rather for switching between similar "things".
If you want to employ this on device pre-3.0 though, you will have to use ActionBarSherlock. It does work fine and we're using it in several projects, so if you're having problems integrating it I suggest creating a new question for that, I'll be happy to help.
I would like to create a custom spinner view so that the spinner options are displayed directly below the spinner control, NOT in a modal pop-up. I would like it to be modeless and the functionality would be similar to what you might see in an html select tag. I'm using Android platform 2.1.
Is this possible?
This should be technically possible, but it's not going to be worth it. I know it is a terrible answer, but I don't think it's wise to fight the system on basic UI controls if you don't have to. You would likely be going to a path from which you are unlikely to emerge in victory. It's more than a quick stackoverflow answer.
Are you getting design requirements like this from someone else? If so, please have them read through Android Design if you need to push back. What is the main reason you want this html-like behavior?
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.
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