Is it a good practice to develop an app that uses the full screen?
It is not a game, full screen would be just nice to have more space on the screen for GUI elements.
But I have the dim feeling, that a full screen app could break some recommandations for good app design. The developer guide gives no answer to this. Who knows more?
I'm learning how to develop on android and it is very important for me to learn it right.
In his private blog Reto Meier(Android Book author working at Google) advises everybody to not build full screen apps. These apps will blog the clock and the notification area and this will make the user unaware of every other app they are using.
I personally even dislike the full screen mode of some ebook readers because I read those ebooks at bus stops or in the train and I need a quick look on the clock while reading a book.
Don't annoy your users just for 30px of screen estate.
If you think your design with this more space is perfect and every user will acknowledge this and wants to use it after trying it make it a setting to hide or show the notification bar. If you are using Google Analaytics you could even measure how many of your users are using this feature and then adjust the default setting.
I would say, depends on the app. Personally, I'd get a little peeved if the notification area popped down over my "Angry Birds" and ruined the shot! ;)
Related
I need a home screen clone app that uses apps, folders, swipable screens of more apps and so on.
So far, I have looked into custom launchers like this one here: https://www.androidauthority.com/make-a-custom-android-launcher-837342-837342/
But to achieve what I need will require a lot of extra additions (the icons are easy enough, but I'll need folders and swiping as well).
Another approach I wondered about is Kiosk mode/Lock-Task-Mode and multi-app kiosk mode. I've looked at the docs and wondered if this could be used to harness the actual homescreen, while still executing code in the background based on what apps the user selects (ultimately acheiving the same desired effect of my project).
I've spent a full day looking at this but I want to know if I'm on the right path. Obviously, I could create an app that contains all of this, but I do think I want it to be a launcher app that's locked in place so that users can't operate the actual home screen and its apps. No malicious intent here, it's just for a closed-off research project.
Any insight is greatly appreciated.
As many other Android developers, I'm not a huge fan of splash screens, but still most customers want them because iPhone has them or some other "great" reason.
In the android guidelines it says:
Naturally, you want everyone to quickly learn the ropes, discover the cool features, and get the most out of your app. So you might be tempted to present a one-time introductory slideshow, video, or splash screen to all new users when they first open the app. Or you might be drawn to the idea of displaying helpful text bubbles or dialogs when users interact with certain features for the first time.
Link here, first paragraph in "Don't show unsolicited help, except in very limited cases"
And now in the material design guidelines they recommend developers to use a "Launch Screen"
Because launching your app while displaying a blank canvas increases its perceived loading time, consider using a placeholder UI or a branded launch screen.
I'm guessing the android website hasn't been updated yet. Anyway, the last version of Hangouts (5.0.104...) has a very nice and quick Launch Screen. Its displayed instantly on my Nexus 5 with Marshmallow. So my question, is there an "official" way of doing this?
I've been searching for examples but can't find anything except for kind of workarounds like this example here which uses what I think is the most common approach with a Splash Screen Activity. This, however, shows a white screen when the app has been destroyed before your actual splash screen is shown.
This second example uses a theme with a window background which is shown instantly but disappears almost equally quick.
So, how does Google make the Launch screen like in Google Hangouts which is shown without delay and without any white screen before?
A colleague from my work have been in a material design training at Google HQ in London and their official way of doing it is using the windowBackground in the theme as you posted on your own question: http://antonioleiva.com/branded-launch-screen/
The idea is that the XML theme gets show very very fast by the framework, and as soon as your actual layout is loaded it will be visible.
The difference between Hangouts or even Google Maps, is that their layout is a very heavy/complex layout and they simply take longer to load than a HelloWorld app.
As your app grows and gets more complex and with more elements being initialized during Application.onCreate or Activity.onCreate, your slash screen will also be visible for longer time.
edit:
I've found a Google+ post from the official "Android Developers" profile and repost from Google engineer Ian Lake saying the same thing:
https://plus.google.com/+AndroidDevelopers/posts/Z1Wwainpjhd
https://plus.google.com/+IanLake/posts/SW7F2CJvAmU
It's because the first solution (http://antonioleiva.com/branded-launch-screen/) is changing the theme in onCreate. But the widgets of your activity are not yet rendered in onCreate. That's why you see the white screen. The second example is a good one. If you need longer time set SPLASH_TIME to longer. Check the line Thread.sleep(SPLASH_TIME) in the doInBackground function. You can wait more.
I am very new to android development. I wanna create a app thats like a ticker on android tablet. But when the user clicks on any other application, i still want my ticker to be visible and the other app to resize and occupy rest of the screen only.
Somebody told me that this is not possible. Is it the case ? Anyone know of any similar app ? or somehow plz get me started with this ?
Thanks for your help.
Cheers
It is not a good idea steal screen space from other applications. If your ticker is floating above like modal window, it would probably block some views for the user.
If your app is competing for the screen space, the other app would probably look ugly.
My suggestion is that you rethink your application, and follow the user interface guidelines.
Good luck!
I believe this isn't possible. Even if, it isn't a good idea. If you want something like that consider creating a widget or some kind of notification. That would be the best and a lot of applications use notifications like that.
what you want to do is creating a system type of window,such as PHONE_WINDOW,make your app flowing on the up-layer of other normal window.
You may read this post
http://www.apkbus.com/android-77789-1-1.html
I am new to Android. So new that I am not even clear on the terminology. From the user perspective, one can swipe from one page (iOS term) to another on Android. I have been told that these are called "panels" - but googling that term, I find out about the notification panel - which seems to be what iOS would call the status bar. Or, perhaps, these are called "home screens"
I would like to find out if there is a way to change the background image as the user swipe from one page/panel(?) to another. For example, I might want my game apps to have a green background and my social media apps to have a blue background. If this can be done by setting a panel's background image, that would be good. If there's a hack with wallpapers, that would be okay, too.
Any pointers to Android UI guideline doc that names visual entities would be great. Likewise, any pointers to a glossary of Android UI terms would also be wonderful.
Thanks in advance.
UPDATE:
I have just come across "live wallpaper" and am wondering if this - with onOffsetsChanged() - is the way to go.
In regards to the widget questions the term has two meanings: the UI components provided by the API such as TextView, Button, and WebView and the other meaning is an icon on the launcher that does more than start an app. The latter is also referred to as App Widget and an example of this would be music player controls or weather report. Both kinds of widgets are documented at the Android Developer website.
Wallpapers are typically Live or static. Live Wallpapers are similar in idea to screensavers but do not have the same function as screensavers are for inactivity. They can also be interactive. Static wallpapers are generally bitmaps that are cropped for the situation or specially made for the dimensions. In addition a Launcher (which is the name of the "desktop application" and the Launcher Home being the "Desktop") can be replaced to provide additional features for wallpapers. For your specific question about having an image gallery style wallpaper, the vanilla Launcher does not support this.
I want do an app,i want it look the same as this one:
I don't know how to write the word "writing" as the red mark ,and how to add the app icon on
the screen.
The answer is simple and yet annoying: It is not possible using the standard lock screen. Source of Android's lock screen describes where to find the source code of the default lock screen, and if you look into the source code of LockScreen.java you will find out that this information is hard coded. So basically you will have to wait for a new Android version to support this feature or program your own lock screen, which kind of misses the point. :-/
I only found a comment in the docu here that it could be possible to add a widget to the lock screen sometime. Any than this I found some apps that deliver a complete alternative lock screen.
So my guess it, that the clock on your screen is only able to show the info on the lock screen due to an extra (HTC?)-API that is not available for third party developer as suggested here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3556430 too.