Menus Menus are a common user interface component in many types of applications. To provide a familiar and consistent user experience, you should use the Menu APIs to present user actions and other options in your activities. Beginning with Android 3.0 (API level 11), Android-powered devices are no longer required to provide a dedicated Menu button. With this change, Android apps should migrate away from a dependence on the traditional 6-item menu panel and instead provide an action bar to present common user actions. Although the design and user experience for some menu items have changed, the semantics to define a set of actions and options is still based on the Menu APIs. This guide shows how to create the three fundamental types of menus or action presentations on all versions of Android: Options menu and action bar The options menu is the primary collection of menu items for an activity. See the section about Creating an Options Menu. Context menu and contextual action mode Popup menu
Android UI Design Kit PSD 4.2 [Free Download] | Android User Interface | User Experience In August 2012, Android ICS/JB Photoshop GUI Design Kit 3.0 was published with some new Jelly Bean UI elements, and until today, the Design Kit has been downloaded over 21,000 times since the very first version back in December 2011 – not a huge number, but it is putting a smile on my face. It’s really nice to see there are many designers interested in Android Design and used the Design Kit to kick-start their design work in Android app. A big thank you to everyone that is using the design kit and I really hope it helps in your Android app design workflow in some way. And today, I have finally updated the Android UI Design Kit PSD to version 4.2, with the size of Nexus 4 screen resolution (768×1280), as requested by many supporters. Besides the resolution update, I have also added a few new UI elements into the Design Kit: Cards (Google Now)CroutonDrawer MenuQuick ReturnUndo BarGestures Android UI Design Kit 4.3 for Photoshop and GIMP is here! Like this: Like Loading...
Supporting Different Screens Android categorizes device screens using two general properties: size and density. You should expect that your app will be installed on devices with screens that range in both size and density. As such, you should include some alternative resources that optimize your app’s appearance for different screen sizes and densities. There are four generalized sizes: small, normal, large, xlarge And four generalized densities: low (ldpi), medium (mdpi), high (hdpi), extra high (xhdpi) To declare different layouts and bitmaps you'd like to use for different screens, you must place these alternative resources in separate directories, similar to how you do for different language strings. Also be aware that the screens orientation (landscape or portrait) is considered a variation of screen size, so many apps should revise the layout to optimize the user experience in each orientation. Create Different Layouts Note: Android automatically scales your layout in order to properly fit the screen.
Free Wireframing Kits, UI Design Kits, PDFs and Resources Advertisement To mock-up the user interface of a website, software or any other product, you’ll need some basic UI elements. And this is where wireframing kits and UI design kits come in handy. In this post, we’ve prepared an overview of useful web and mobile user interface kits, handy PDFs and resources that you can use in your projects. Free Mobile GUI PSD Android GUI PSD1 This Android GUI PSD is based on elements of the Android 1.5 GUI and was made to help the open-source community with its Android application mock-ups. RIM Blackberry PSD2 A complete PSD file with layer styles, this has 135 layers of Photoshop goodness. Android Sketch Stencil Version 1.03 A Sketch-style Android OmniGraffle template. All elements of Maemo 5 GUI in PSD4 This downloadable PSD file contains GUI template elements for the Maemo platform. iPhone 4 GUI PSD (Retina Display)5GUI PSD kit for creatives who design for the retina display (640×960). Google Android PSD10 A stencil set for Google Android prototyping.
Tabs Developer Docs Creating Swipe Views with Tabs Tabs in the action bar make it easy to explore and switch between different views or functional aspects of your app, or to browse categorized data sets. For details on using gestures to move between tabs, see the Swipe Views pattern. Scrolling tab controls can contain a larger number of items than a standard tab control. Scrolling tabs in the Play Store app. Fixed Tabs Fixed tabs display all items concurrently. Fixed tabs are displayed with equal width, based on the width of the widest tab label. Tabs in Holo Dark & Light. Tabs in the Google Play Movies app.
Dashboards Google Play Install Stats The Google Play Developer Console also provides detailed statistics about your users' devices. Those stats may help you prioritize the device profiles for which you optimize your app. This page provides information about the relative number of devices that share a certain characteristic, such as Android version or screen size. This data reflects devices running the latest Google Play Store app, which is compatible with Android 2.2 and higher. Platform Versions This section provides data about the relative number of devices running a given version of the Android platform. For information about how to target your application to devices based on platform version, read Supporting Different Platform Versions. Data collected during a 7-day period ending on February 1, 2016. Note: This data is gathered from the new Google Play Store app, which supports Android 2.2 and above, so devices running older versions are not included. Screen Sizes and Densities Open GL Version
User Experience Trends for Admin Dashboards The design techniques for admin dashboards are not as openly shared as website layouts. This is because you do not always find examples of admin designs open on the web. To gain access you would need a user/password combo, so designers are often left building with trends found in other examples. But the dashboard interface has grown very quickly as a popular layout style for administrators. In this article I want to look into various styles and ideas for creating administration dashboard pages. Tabbed Navigation Utilizing tab buttons for page navigation has been a common trend for years. Any form of tabbed link design can work for a navbar. I can’t make the claim that every control panel navigation should be using tabs. Toolbar Icons I had briefly mentioned icons earlier but I think this design trend is important even outside of navigation. Modern designers have a much easier time building these interfaces because of the many freebie icon releases to be found online. Popover Hover Menus
Design Patterns for Responsive Android Design According to Andy Rubin there are about 600 different Android devices available in the market right now. Supporting all of them is impossible, right? At least that is what we see in tech blogs throughout the Internet. Funnily enough, fragmentation seems to be much bigger problem to people who don't work in Android development or have good understanding of the platform than to people who do. iOS got a big head start when the latest smartphone revolution started. Almost a year ago Google released Android Honeycomb (3.0). 2.6" - Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini 3.7" - Nexus One 4.0" - Galaxy S 4.6" - Galaxy Nexus 5.3" - Galaxy Note 7.0" - Toshiba Thrive 8.9" - Galaxy Tab 8.9 10.1" - Asus Transformer Where does a tablet begin and phone end? Solution - Responsive Design Designing for multiple different screen sizes is not a new problem. In web design a rising trend is to use responsive design. In web the technique is based on CSS3. In our example we have three components: A, B and C.