Android User Interface Design Turning Ideas and Sketches into Beautifully Designed Apps

by Clifton, Ian G.

• ISBN13: 9780321886736
• ISBN10: 0321886739
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2013-05-01
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional

Summary

As the world's most popular mobile operating system, Android has grown phenomenally in just a few short years. Creating an app that stands out in a world with hundreds of thousands of other apps is becoming increasingly more challenging, so designing your user interface to be both usable and visually pleasing is extremely important. Written by expert Android application developer Ian G. Clifton, Android User Interface Design will help you accomplish both of these goals and more. Whether you have a dozen apps already published or you have just completed the Hello World tutorial, this book will guide you through the complete process of brainstorming, wireframing, designing, and building Android apps. You will make use of the latest design patterns while taking advantage of the newest features of Android including Jelly Bean's rich notification system; at the same time, you will maintain compatibility with older versions of Android by use of the support library and reflection techniques. Learn to create goal-based mobile user experiences, understand visual design patterns and best practices for implementation, create custom views with advanced graphical techniques and specialized touch handling, and turn your ideas and sketches into beautifully designed apps. This book covers: · An overview of Android UI and design philosophies · A detailed guide and reference to Android's Views, ViewGroups, and resources · Real-world application design including wireframes, flowcharts, and comps · Implementation of design using standard components (including the action bar, ViewPager, Fragments, and other newer Android UI design patterns) and fully custom views · Advanced graphical techniques including Porter-Duff compositing and more

Author Biography

Ian Clifton has been developing Android apps since Android first hit the scene. During the course of his career as an Android developer, Ian worked with several designers on a range of Android apps (CBS News, Survivor, CNET News, Big Brother, Rick Steves’ Audio Europe, Bubbleator). Ian is also the author of our forthcoming Android development video set: The Essentials of Android Application Development.
Ian has a strong online presence, with his blog: http://blog.iangclifton.com – focused on mobile development and Android in particular. He’s also an occasional contributor to http://androidpolice.com, and can be found here on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/IanGClifton.

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 - Android UI Overview

Chapter 2 - Understanding Views - The UI Building Blocks

Chapter 3 - Ceating Full Layouts with ViewGroups and Fragments

Chapter 4 - Adding App Graphics and Resources

Chapter 5 - Starting a New App

Chapter 6 - Developing the App Foundation

Chapter 7 - Finalizing the Design

Chapter 8 - Applying the Design

Chapter 9 - Further Improving the App

Chapter 10 - How to Handle Common Components

Chapter 11 - Combining Views for Custom Components

Chapter 12 - Developing Fully Custom Views

Chapter 13 - Working with the Canvas and Advanced Drawing

Appendix A - Google Play Assets

Appendix B - Amazon Appstore Assets

Appendix C - Common Task Reference