I am currently planning the honeycomb update for my app and i am wondering how to use the Action Bar correctly. My first question is if it is possible to hide the App-Icon and Title from the Action Bar.
And is there any kind of Design guidline for the Honeycomb-UI yet?
Yes, you can hide the app icon and title. You can also replace the app icon with a wider logo image for your activity.
The app icon/logo at the left is collectively treated as a "home" affordance. You can optionally ask the system to display it as "up." When tapped, this should take the user either to a home/landing page for your app or one level up in the app's navigation hierarchy, respectively.
This complements the system back button by providing a consistent way for the user to move around your app when the history associated with the back button might be complex. (For example, the user might have been deep-linked into your app through a notification or an intent from another application.) By using this pattern your app won't need to hijack the normal behavior of the back button in special cases for convenience.
The action bar does double duty in the form of action modes. The two APIs are orthogonal but the resulting UI occupies the same screen real estate. An action mode presents a set of contextually relevant options to the user as a customized action bar. For example, a user might select several items from a list at a time. The app might present an action mode to let the user take a bulk action on the set of all selected items such as delete or share.
Action modes are a great way to present contextual actions that doesn't stop the user from interacting with the rest of the UI the way that popup menus do.
Design guidelines will hopefully be published "soon." :)
Related
Is it possible to hide navigation bar on e.g. tablets in activity, so it does not appear when user is clicking on the screen?
I want it to appear only when user is swiping from bottom to middle of the screen, just like in e.g. Real Racing 3.
When I use:
myView.setSystemUiVisibility(View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_HIDE_NAVIGATION);
Unfortunetly navigation bar is hidden, but when user is clicking, it appears again. I want it to work only with this swipe gesture. How it can be achieved?
This is a platform behavior. Apps do not have the sort of control of the navigation bar that you are looking for, and for good reason. All it takes is one app not implementing a way to show the nav bar and the user is stuck. You will have to design your app with the platform's behavior in mind.
What I wish to do is what Surelock does, I can already stop the user from acessing the status bar's menu, my problem is I can only do that for my app.
I need help doing it the way surelock does it, for every app launched within my app I need to collapse the status bar menu.
Use the WindowManager to draw a View over the touch area for the notification bar that consumes all the touch events.
Keep in mind that this breaks expected behaviour on Android, and is an anti practice. If the notification bar is visible, it should be expandable. I doubt too many users will appreciate you doing this.
I am writing an App using MonoDroid and for some reason I cannot pull down the notification bar from the top of the screen. I am thinking this has to do with my layout, but I am not sure. I also notice that when my App is running I do not have the bar at the top showing the battery, time, signal strength, etc.
So, my question is, what do I need to do to allow the user to pull the notification bar down? And how to show the info at the top of the screen?
I suspect you have done something to make your app appear in "Full Screen" mode (this will turn the home, menu and back buttons on the bottom of the screen to dots, and hide the navigation bar.
I believe this is called "lights out mode". Here is one SO question asking how to turn it on (maybe it will help you turn it off as well): Hide ICS back home task switcher buttons
Maybe your theme is
android:theme="#android:style/Theme.NoTitleBar.Fullscreen" ?
It hides the notification bar. Change to a non-fullscreen theme to make the the notification bar visible.
I'm On Honeycomb (3.1) and my first problem is that I don't know what is the name of the bar at the bottom of the OS (appears in every application). I've seen some apps add options to this bottom bar (it has by default the back button the home button and the show active programs button, besides the watch, battery indicator and signal connection strength). When a certain program uses options it sometimes adds them to this bottom bar (it is usually seen as a grid-like icon next to the show active programs buttons, which you can click and a menu pops up.
I've described it as best as I can, but My question is simple: how can I create a menu like this on in my app?
Thanks for any help!
EDIT:
Ok, I've just read it's a compatibility feature. And it's not supposed to be there in an Android App.
I feel stupid...
I'm On Honeycomb (3.1) and my first problem is that I don't know what is the name of the bar at the bottom of the OS (appears in every application).
That is the "system bar".
I've seen some apps add options to this bottom bar
This happens automatically for applications that set up an options menu using onCreateOptionsMenu(). However, once the application switches to the Honeycomb look-and-feel (e.g., via android:targetSdkVersion="11"), the options menu moves to the action bar.
how can I create a menu like this on in my app?
Long-term, you do not want to do this, because it means that you will not have the action bar and will not look like you belong on Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, etc.
Short-term, simply do not have android:targetSdkVersion="11", and implement an options menu as normal.
Okay, this would be fairly simple in some other environments, but I can't figure out how to do it, or if its even possible in Android.
I have placed an icon on the status bar. I would like to run a method of another class whenever the user selects that icon. I've seen similar functionality used in volume icons that sit on the status bar that allow a user to raise or lower the volume when the icon is clicked. However, these icons are on the right side of the status bar, and from what I've seen, I'm not allowed to put an icon there. I don't know if that kind of functionality is available to left side icons.
So basically, I'm looking for how to run a function when a status bar icon is clicked. I don't want to open an activity, I just want to run a function.
What you're searching is probably related to the Android UI ActionBar pattern.
Regarding that I'd like to consider you to take a look at the Google I/O 2010 Android app. It contains many of these patterns and may help you out.
Summarizing, you have to create your own ActionBar (or Status Bar as you call it). You place your buttons, retrieve them via the findViewById(...) method and associate a click listener.