i'm designing an android app atm and i wonder how it is possible to switch between views with a "sliding" animation as on the iphone.
what i mean is that i want to stay in an Activity and slide from left to right (or vice versa) and PART of the views slide in the respective direction, making room for another view. the rest of the ui stays where it is.
it is actually possible, since i've seen it in an actual working (not yet published) app. so - how do i do this?
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I am making an app and want to make sure I am following good practices before I proceed further and potentially turn my app into a "big ball of mud" implementation.
So right now the general idea I have in my head is where you have a row of icons along the top representing the different pages you can click on. You click the button/icon and it takes you to that page.
So this icon-row along the top would be constant throughout most of the app. The only thing that would change would be the contents below that icon-row.
Is it considered acceptable practice to use fragments here? Use one main activity that has the icon-row at the top and then have the container below that "swap out" fragments based on the icon clicked? And then each page is really just a big fragment?
Does this make sense, am I following good practice? Is there a better way to do this?
I am making an app and want to make sure I am following good practices before I proceed further and potentially turn my app into a "big ball of mud" implementation.
If that happens, try a good brand of laundry detergent, at least if you are using Twitter Fabric.
So right now the general idea I have in my head is where you have a row of icons along the top representing the different pages you can click on. You click the button/icon and it takes you to that page.
A typical implementation of that in mobile apps is to use tabs that contain your icons.
Is it considered acceptable practice to use fragments here? Use one main activity that has the icon-row at the top and then have the container below that "swap out" fragments based on the icon clicked? And then each page is really just a big fragment?
Most modern tab implementations are based around using a ViewPager as the container for the tabs, so the user can swipe the content or tap on the tab to switch to different pages. ViewPager can work with plain views for its pages, but the stock PagerAdapter implementations use fragments.
Even if you elected to eschew tabs, using fragments for the pages (whether wrapped in a ViewPager or not) is reasonable.
The big thing to watch out for is memory consumption. Android devices do not have infinite RAM.[citation needed] You need to make sure that you have a modest number of fragments outstanding at any given point.
Yes, this is the proper way to use the parent activity or fragment with this "icon-row". You can use the Toolbar+menu for example, if you want to preserve the Android look, use tabs+ViewPager or use custom view.
Then, in this activity/fragment you will have a layout that will work as a fragment container. In this layout you can replace the fragments dynamically using the FragmentManager of parent activity/fragment. Each of these pages is a separate fragment.
So yes, this is good/common practice.
You may read the how-to about replacing fragments here
I need some advice for those who are experienced making Android applications. What I would really like to have, for my application's appearance: at the top, a title-bar which is a ImageView (content is a png), and at the bottom a series of custom buttons which make up a tab-bar like thing. In between the title and the tab-bar is the Content, which may be anything... (most likely buttons)
I have been doing this by making a RelativeLayout which specifies LeftMargin and UpperMargin for x,y coordinates--
Currently all of my activities are inheriting a custom MyActivity class, which rebuilds the title and the tab-bar at the time of onCreate. This seems bad to me!
PART1)
---A solution to Persistent data
Since the "tab-bar" and the title are persistent no matter what screen you're on during this application's run-time, it makes the most sense to store them somewhere... How should I do this? Make a singleton object that the Activity's ask for?
I thought a little about the singleton object, and I'm not even sure what I would store, since the Views that are on displayed during Activity A have activity A as context, and not Activity B.
PART2)
---Animation Aesthetics
I would really like to have the "Content" (the view in the middle between title and tabbar) slide out to the left, and the new content slide in from the right. I.e, I'd like the tab-bar and the title to remain fixed while the "activities" change. is this at all possible? What should I do to achieve it?
one idea I had, was to make all of the program in one activity! I would create an animation for the Custom View in the middle, and I would override the "back" button to navigate correctly to the previous Custom View. Is that a horrible idea?
Anyone have any advice?
Read http://developer.android.com/design. Most of the design principles can be applied to apps that run on legacy releases; it's not just limited to Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich. Do consider the Action Bar and Dashboard design patterns.
I don't really recommend using just one Activity -- generally, an Activity should be a separate, encapsulated, pretty well defined chunk of functionality that can execute independently of other Activities.
To avoid duplication of your UI, consider reusing XML layouts.
To avoid duplication of your logic, consider using Fragments. You should be able to mix and match them in your activities.
To achieve the animation you describe, consider implementing a ViewPager.
Using the ActionBarCompat sample app and Android Support Library, you can enjoy modern goodies like Action Bar, fragments, tabs, and horizontal sliding transitions on devices running Android all the way back to Donut (1.6).
I don't know if it's a dumb question because it is one of my first apps.. but if that's the case, please also explain why!
If I create a Tab-Based Activity-Structure, I get nearly what I am asking for but only for Tabs. What I want is generally opening a second or even third activity in one main-activity which contains the main-interface.
Example: I have a Title-Bar and a little icon at the bottom-left corner for some reason during the whole app runtime. Now: How can I control them with the main activity and open at the same time some other activities/views into the existing interface? It should then be shown below the title bar and lying underneath the little icon (the icon is not really important, just fictional). Also it would be nice if I could add some fade in effects to these embedded activities/views. Is that somehow possible?
I currently only know, how to open activities each over another filling the whole screen, except in the case of tabs... maybe I only haven't inspected the tab structure enough.. however, I would be delighted about each answer!
Regards
What you are looking for, are Fragments.
Fragments can be used to fill a part of the screen, while doing something else entirely in a different one.
In your example you can create a main activity that contains two Fragments. One Fragment controls the title bar, the other one controls the main content area.
By replacing the current Fragment in your content area with a different one on the press of a button, you can achieve the behavior you are looking for. At least, that's how I did it in an app of mine containing a main content area and a music player. The music player stays in place while the main content changes.
Sadly I can't provide any example code right now, but here is a tutorialthat should help you get started:
Android User Interface Design: Working With Fragments
Android has many useful tools when coming to views and screens and layouts.
Description: While playing my game (running around as a zombie bear eating humans) I would like to allow the player to access an items menu via sliding a menu from the right side/edge of the screen. Or at the least be able to access a game options menu (not game settings which would be the menu button).
What would be the best fit for description?
P.S How would I make a question like this less like a discussion and more like a straight forward programming question when I don't really know what's available to do this.
Also, if this is the case, please point me to another location to ask a question that may require a discussion.
Thank You!
Try looking at the SlidingDrawer class.
PS I personally don't see a problem with how you have worded your question if you are looking for ideas of views/widgets you need to perform a specific function/effect.
My first thought, and for a simple approach (this wouldn't be animated or dragged really), would be using a RelativeLayout where the portion representing the menu was initially set so that it's visibility were GONE, except for a small tab or arrow or something. When that tab/arrow is touched, the visibility of the View for the menu could be toggled to VISIBLE.
With visibility set to GONE, a view is not drawn or considered in any part of the layout pass when the screen is drawn.
You could populate a listview with some icons and when an particular icon is selected, then figure out which one was selected and then execute some function and hide the sidebar using an animation. I've never developed a game, so I'm not too sure how far it deviates from the standard, but I wish you the best of luck :) ! If you post the source let me know would love to test your game and see how you work with the source!
I'm trying to create a "scrollable" layout in Android. Even using developers.android.com, though, I feel a little bit lost at the moment. I'm somewhat new to Java, but not so much that I feel I should be having these issues--being new to Android is the bigger problem right now.
The layout I'm trying to create should scroll in a sort of a "grid". I THINK what I'm looking for is the Gallery view, but I'm really lost as to how to implement it at the moment. I want it to "snap" to center the frame, like in the actual Gallery application.
Essentially, if I had a photo gallery of 9 pictures, the idea is to scroll between them up/down AND side to side, in a 3x3 manner. Doesn't need to dynamically adjust, or anything like that, I just want a grid I can scroll through.
I'm also not asking for anyone to give me explicit code for it--I'm trying to learn, more than anything. But pointing me in the right direction for helpful layout programming resources would be greatly appreciated, and confirming if it's a Gallery view I'm looking for would also be really helpful.
EDIT: To clarify, the goal is to have ONE item on screen at a time. If you scroll between one item and the next, the previous one leaves the screen, and the new one snaps into place. So if it were a photo gallery, each spot on the grid would take up the entire screen size, approximately, and would be flung out of the viewable area when you slide across to the next photo, in either direction. (Photos are just an example for illustration purposes)
This page gives a good summary of the different built in layout objects. From your description a GridView or possibly a TableLayout might work. GalleryView looks to be horizontal only.
I believe GridView is what you're looking for. Here's a tutorial: http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/views/hello-gridview.html
You should check out the ViewPager widget, which is available in the Android compatibility package. I spent a loooong time trying to get the Gallery widget to behave properly, but finally settled on a ViewPager which returned ImageView objects instead. Works like a charm.