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
Related
I'm an amateur android programmer and I really like to code. My main difficulty is to make apps nice.
I came across a simple app, but at the same time, nice: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.linksaude.bulas
I would like to know if this app has been designed with some specific plugin/add-on for Eclipse or whatever. It seems to be so consistent and beautifully designed that there must be an answer to simplify the building process of such apps.
Thanks!
I think what you're impressed with is the consistent color theme of the application. It looks like its designers carefully overrode the default design of Android widgets with their own custom scheme.
There is NOT any plugin for development tools that will help you achieve this; however, there are many external tools.
Here is a tool to generate styles for the action bar (the navigation bar at the top):
http://jgilfelt.github.io/android-actionbarstylegenerator
A tool to generate custom colored Holo widgets: (Holo is the theme in modern Android platforms):
http://android-holo-colors.com/
And my #1 favorite resource for this type of customization, this website:
http://www.stylingandroid.com/
These three are more than sufficient to customize an interface like the one you linked to above. Good luck!
Though beauty is in the eye of the beholder, this will do the job.
http://developer.android.com/design/index.html
Welcome to Android Design, your place for learning how to design
exceptional Android apps.
There are some DevBytes videos on YouTube of how you make your app beautiful.
The result is an application which looks very modern and beautiful, you should have a look at those videos
I've been asked to develop an App for both systems, Android and iPhone, and both must look the same. So, I would like to get a set of icons that look like the iPhone buttons.
Anybody knows a link where I can download/buy a set of .png to make the Android app look like the iPhone one? (In iPhone, im gonna use de default buttons)
Thank you.
Before giving a few links to get you started, let me also include a link from Android's design guidelines followed by a quote from the same link:
Pure Android
Don't mimic UI elements from other platforms
Platforms typically provide a carefully designed set of UI elements
that are themed in a very distinctive fashion. For example, some
platforms advocate rounded corners for their buttons, others use
gradients in their title bars. In some cases, elements may have the
same purpose, but are designed to work a bit differently.
I am not sure if aping / mimicking the iPhone is the intention or the right way heading into multi-platform development (although I am inclined to think, based on the topic heading, that you intend to keep just a common icon base across platforms). But without getting into that debate and the proverbial can of worms. Anyway, here a few links as mentioned at the top:
NOTE: I do not develop for the iOS platform and am not entirely aware of what the default icons are. If the links posted are useless, give me a heads up. ;-)
http://www.glyphish.com/
http://www.designshock.com/free-iphone-icons/
http://www.iconshock.com/iphone-icons/
http://speckyboy.com/2008/07/18/35-free-icon-sets-for-your-iphone-pimp-it-up/
http://visionwidget.com/free-iphone-themes-icons-sets.html
http://ntt.cc/2010/05/10/50-free-hand-picked-iphone-icon-sets.html
http://www.tutorialchip.com/freebies/25-impressive-fantastic-icon-sets-for-your-iphone/
http://skyje.com/iphone-themes-and-icon-sets/
http://inspiredm.com/5-essential-icon-sets-for-iphone-applications/
The first link (glyphish) usually pops up all over Google when searching for mobile icons. Oh. They also support the Retina Display. :-)
What are the possibilities to develop android apps with custom styled widgets (by widgets I mean gui elements like buttons, boxes, menus). I want to develop android apps which don't use the standard look and feel of android. What are the widget libraries available? Are there any other ways to achieve this?
One of the possibilities would be to use html and phonegap and style the app with css. But I'm looking for a non-html and phonegapesque way to achieve this.
Look for example at the apps mentioned on the following page:
http://androidquark.com/top-6-best-alternative-photography-apps-instagram/
did they draw their widgets themselves? Or can such effect be achieved using the themeing mentioned in one of the answers?
You can customize your widgets just about any way you wish. For example, buttons are easy to customize by using ImageButton, and assigning it to any graphic you wish. Here's an example of custom "buttons" in a palette in a soon to be released update to an app of mine...even the crayons are buttons.
You can find a collection of them here:
https://github.com/mingyuan-xia/DevAndroidQuickly
I have created an Android app using the standard controls available. It seems that most apps on the market have their own set of controls. It generally looks much better that the standard controls. How do I create better looking control? Can I just apply a theme or should I overwrite the onDraw method? For instance, there is a problem with the default android spinner control details here .
adding custom images is the best way to have more eye-catching GUI, use colorful & meaningful images to your application to appeal users. Custom theme's and styles are helpful too.....
You can apply different themes and styles on the one hand or work with 9patch-drawables - have a look here for details and examples
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