I'd like to develop apps for Android after 2 years of developing iPhone apps. First of all, I'm not a programmer. I'm a UI designer and usability engineer with basic knowledge of app programming. I have a colleague doing the part of the programmer. So my first look into the documents on developer.android.com titled "UI design" resultet in surprise. No real design guidelines, just clutter about coding, no concrete hints how apps have to look like what you are expecting when you read "UI Design". OK - Android is a very open system for many different hardware types - maybe a little bit hard to give advices that fit for all systems - but not impossible. Let's look at e.g. Symbian - it's relatively open too and they have this: forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/8299c7a4-d3d8-4c4c-b62e-97a4c831e6a3/User_Experience_Evaluation_Model_v1_1_en.pdf.html
Great help, good basics!
Apple has this: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/Introduction/Introduction.html
Examplary done!
Now I am searching for the equivalent document for Android UI Devs (again, not the programming part). This one looks great: developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/index.html
but it does not cover all scenarios and sooner or later gets lost in advices for coding.
I'm looking forward to your help.
Many thanks and best regards.
I think those at http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/index.html are the only ones at the moment, quote: The Android UI team has begun developing guidelines for the interaction and visual design of Android applications. Look here for articles that describe these guidelines as we release them.. So it sounds like there will be more in the future but they haven't finished them yet.
You can also find some information here: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/index.html
In general, I don't think Google has a different mindset than Apple when it comes to design so I doubt there will ever be as much official material.
There's a document called androidhig.pdf that seems to be someone that has just created a set ot reasonable guidelines themselves by adapting the IPhone ones, I can't find any download link for that document now, but if you google for the file name you can do quickview on at least one of the links to see the contents of the file.
Google has launched a brand new site with Android UI and design guidelines.
As #ho1 notes, HIG is very much a work in progress. In addition to those suggestions, I'd recommend a recent blog post on UI design patterns, which I found enlightening.
EDITED ADDENDUM: UI design patterns were also described at the I/O conference, available as video.
Related
I'm a new Android developer and I need to create an Android application which looks like Apple's App store (on both phone and tablet).
I'm a bit familiar with Native layout designer in Eclipse (ADT) and I find it really hard to design such an amazing UI.
I've searched a lot and I've found some web-based UI frameworks such as Phonegap and Chocolatechip-UI. Are these frameworks capable of designing such apps or not? Or do you suggest something else?
Thnx in advance
This question does not have a right or wrong answer. It really depends on how complex your UI is. How sleek you want it to be.
If your UI is pretty but simple and does not require very complex animations you could go for PhoneGap. however, if you have got very complex UI and want very sleek animations I suggest you use the native APIs.
This however, may change in the near future as web technology is improving really fast :)
I am looking to start writing apps for mobile devices. I know a little about this subjec, and I am proficient in both java and python. However, before jumping into creating apps I wanted to get the community's input on a question I have not yet found the answer to:
How/Where should I begin?
I understand this question is fairly general/basic for a community that focuses on solving/debugging complex programs, but if there is a recommended tutorial (or specific platform) that will help a beginner(such as myself), it would greatly reduce the frustration and amount of monotonous questions asked on this forum and others.
Regards
Coursera is offering 3 courses all using android development which started last week. That would be an excellent starting point for anyone:
https://www.coursera.org/specialization/mobilecloudcomputing/2
How/Where should I begin?
I don't know about you, but I often learn by example more than reading. You mentioned that you're proficient in java so thats a great start. After you understand the Android SDK it's really only the UI good practices you need to learn. So here's my suggestion.
Start off with something super simple. Let's say, create your own version of a calculator. Something that can add, subtract, multiply, and divide. This should be dirty, ugly, but works correctly.
After doing this, take a look at some other android calculators on the play store. Check out Simple Loan Calculator. I use this example because it offers a lot of android UI components. ViewPager, ActionBar, etc. Download this app, take a look at it, and try to mimic it. This should provide an idea on how to work with the android UI components.
What's next? After you have done these two apps you should be relatively ready to tackle your own project.
HTML apps are easy to port across multiple mobile platforms. I have set up an Android HTML template as a starting point. You can just import this project into Eclipse and take a look at that.
https://github.com/jakewp11/HTML5_Android_Template
Here is my experience for ios,
There are three things that I consider as pillars
Objective C
Memory managment
Design patterns
The first one looks obvious but I'd stress on learning concepts like protocols, categories, extensions. As a beginner I thought that learning the syntax was enough, but time and again I had to jump back to the language concepts to understand what's going.
The memory managment , the most talked and confusing subject and now since we have automatic referenc counting to make things simpler and often new Dev skips learning memory concepts (I did it). So I suggest you to have an idea what actually happens under the hood of arc " the manual memory managment"
The design patters,
When I started off , to pass data and control , what I used to do was achieve every thing through the only design patten I knew (target action) . I lack the knowledge of design patters didn't how easily I could achive better results with less code.
Some resources:
Dev.apple.com
http://www.raywenderlich.com (one of my best tutorials are here, you can find one on design patterns)
http://rypress.com/tutorials/objective-c/
And yes , the sample projects at Dev.apple are the best tutors.
I have just starting learning Android development. I am familiar with the Java and Adobe Flex UI. I have basic design curiosity regarding the android development.
What could be the ideal design to develop the app. (Lets say, I have 4-6 different tab)
I have all the wire-frame available. which could be my starting point.
I wanted to use JSON and mongoDB for connectivity purpose ?
Is there any framework available for android development (MVC) ?
Generalized functionalists nice to have. eg. Email or updates for the application to notify.
I am currently going through the tutorial but thats not really helpful in terms of designing the whole application.
Please help me.
thanks,
I think you first just need to take some time and have a good read on Google's own sites.
http://developer.android.com/index.html
Another good place for tutorials is
http://www.vogella.com/articles/Android/
There is no ideal design. Your starting point, is the site above.
Communication between your app and a server is mostly done by JSON or XML. You can't directly access remote databases (Maybe you can with some tricks, but you don't want to.)
Android is a framework, and it is based on MVC.
No idea what you're even asking here.
Good luck and try to make any future questions a lot more specific to programming problems.
Pretty much the title. I'm new in android development. So, I'm interesting about developing rich application, but cannot find a good tutorials. I would be realy appreciated if someone guide me some resources for start.
Maybe there is some open source project where I can find helpful information?
Thank you
UPD1
Is there some guide from start to end where explained how to make an application such a twitter app? Or any other kind of complex and start to end described application?
I would recommend starting here. The Google UI guidelines. It explains the different API for creating UI elements and also gets into pros/cons about icons, menus, fonts and so on.
http://developer.android.com/design/index.html
http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/sites/teach.appinventor.mit.edu/files/MIT%20App%20Inventor%20Development%20Overview_0.pdf
http://cs.usfca.edu/~wolber/appinventor/bookSplits/ch4NoTexting.pdf
These are some of the links that i found very useful for complex android app development.
I have a background in java and i would like to learn how to design user interfaces in 24 hours for android.Can anyone give me an advice on how to go about it in terms of resources.
I hope Android Developer Site has more info about UI..
You can use this link.. http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/index.html
I advice you to study about UI simultaneously with working on Android development, so that you will be familiarized with terms as well as what to use when and where..
Make sure you go through the newly launched Android design website:
http://developer.android.com/design/index.html
You can learn about styling, colors, patterns, typography, interaction patterns, navigation and much more.