There's so many different themes and such out there that do different things, but generally are "too much" for what I'm looking for. What I'd like to find is something that could/would change everything in the evo to white text on black background. I don't need fonts or icons or anything else changed the way it looks. The skills that I'm guessing that would be required to do this I'm positive are way beyond anything I'm capable of.
Menus, settings, mms and google voice would be a huge plus too. I know the mms one has been done and I already have that. I'm assuming that it could be quite a project to go through just about everything and change them from a "flashlight" theme to something easier on the eyes in the dark.
I bought the weather and toggle widget and found the flip clock version that is the opposite of stock and it looks good but is a little heavy sometimes on the resources. If my memory serves me still, I remember the old school flip clocks being more light numerals and dark or colored background.
For those persons that enjoy doing this sort of thing, perhaps you might consider this project. I don't know how many other people out there like what I'm describing. If there were quite a few, maybe that would be an incentive? I know money talks, so I will say ahead of time, I could only say to you "thank you for your hard work and skills."
P.S.
I sent google a request for adding the choice of light or dark theme (and attachments) to google voice, but going by what other people have said, it is most likely falling on deaf ears.
This idea has tutorial project written all over it.
I imagine a more or less monochrome UI with most just solid blacks and not much in the way of gradients, very plain and basic.
I think it would be cool, I really like simplicity/minimalism.
What I mean by the tutorial comment is: For ANYONE even half way interested in learning how to theme and mod this would be a great place to start, for the following reasons..
- Most of the mods would be super easy, there is a wide variety of difficulty levels in theming and the easiest of them will be SIMPLE for anyone who has basic computer skills
- Learning to theme (if you enjoy this stuff) is fun because you build on what you know. It''s almost like a video game in that you do/learn things in levels. There is a dossier (guides, wiki's, google, other forum members, etc.) where you learn what you need to know before you begin the next level (achieving the mod you want to do). You fight through the pawns (editing images, xml's, smali's, etc) to get to the boss (flashing, morphing, testing your mod) and when you defeat the boss you have a sense of accomplishment that is almost immediately replaced with the next level
- The sheer simplicity of this themet lends it to being a community project
For anyone who wants to spend more "quality" time with this hobby and learn more about the platform I think this theme is a great opportunity
*edit- People collaborate a lot on this site and others but I've never personally seen a collaborative theme project. I wonder what the best way would be to (if anyone is interested in it) house everything in an open repository..
Hi Guys This is a guide on app design guidelines.This can be applied everywhere and not only app design. I have seen many apps that perform awesome but their UI scares people away! This won't be a very detailed guide, only basic pointers on UI Design.
First off i would like to say that User experience and functionality of the app is equally or more important than it's UI. There's no point in a app that has a awesome looking UI but is very laggy or lacks functionality.
Lets begin with a few tips :
Try to make the UI simple and clean with no extra clutter.Hide extra functionality in menus. Keep the main function of the program in the front.
Make the UI flat.Use subtle gradients and shadows. Don't make it too flat like the metro ui,in which you can't distinguish an icon from a button
Use a specific color scheme. Select two to three lead colours. and select 1 or 2 background colours.
Either make it dark themed, or light themed, don't mix the two!
Use transitions. But not too fancy.
Split your app into different parts and provide a easy way to navigate
Fix Whatever you can behind the scenes
Use short Phrases, No one wants to read too much to do a simple task!
Use pastel colours or darker colours. ie. one shade lighter or darker than the original color.
Have contrast between the text color and the background color, making it easier to read.
Tricks :
Don't waste much time making animations. Use LayoutTransitions (android 3.0+)
Test your apps on different screen sizes.
Download the color swatches provided by google -click here
Google is your friend. Go to developer.android.com for more guidelines, application fundamentals etc.
Use good typography. Roboto and helvetica are some of the good fonts. Download roboto - click here
Guide on iconography - click here
Warnings! :
Do not use harsh gradients! for eg.. black to white , It makes the app feel cheap.
Try and stay away from putting ads
Do not let the app make decisions for itself, let it ask the user!
Do not make the app too colourful.
Make sure it runs smooth without jitter.
Don't put too much info. at once!
Don't use too flashy colors that hurt the eye.
Again, this isn't meant to be a very long guide, just a few basic things you should keep in mind while designing. For more detailed guidelines use developer.android.com
If i missed something important let me know! :good:
That's really helpful..
Thank you
wad!e said:
That's really helpful..
Thank you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad you liked it
Amazing guide! Thanks so much! I'm glad more people love great design.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 4 Beta
Hello there, thanks for this guide.
I am no developer so I don't have to mess with the graphics, but I still often wonder : in android programming, where there will always be the probrem of multiple display size / resolution, why isn't the most primary & most basic guideline to use as much as possible vector graphics instead of bitmap based graphics ? wouldn't it save a huge amount of hassle of having to make gfx resources for different screen sizes ?
thx in advance
phentex said:
Hello there, thanks for this guide.
I am no developer so I don't have to mess with the graphics, but I still often wonder : in android programming, where there will always be the probrem of multiple display size / resolution, why isn't the most primary & most basic guideline to use as much as possible vector graphics instead of bitmap based graphics ? wouldn't it save a huge amount of hassle of having to make gfx resources for different screen sizes ?
thx in advance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe it would be easier.
However, you would need a proper library to do that. Android does not support adding *.svg vector graphics by default. So all the conversion of the vector graphics need to be done manually. (There are some libs out there, but they do not support all features of *.svg graphics.)
For basic things there is support to do that using the standard Android development APIs provided by Google (declaring drawables in xml files) but it will not be enough for shapes which are more complicated than lines, rectangles or circles or a combination of those.
Addititionally the conversion of vector graphics to bitmaps (graphics consisting of single pixels) would need much processing power and would slow everything down.
Hence *.png and *.9.png files are still the standard way to do that.
@TechMasta: By the way, great guide.
TechMasta said:
Try and stay away from putting ads
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No ads? How does one go about monetization then? Don't get me wrong. I'm a Windows and Windows Phone developer. I was thinking of porting my apps to Android. I'm just getting started. But I'm using Windows Azure for which I do have to pay for. How should I go about those expenses?
TechMasta said:
Do not let the app make decisions for itself, let it ask the user!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sometimes it should. However, the user should be able to change the default behaviour. Or as the android design guidelines express it:
Decide for me but let me have the final say
Take your best guess and act rather than asking first. Too many choices and decisions make people unhappy. Just in case you get it wrong, allow for 'undo'.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
(http://developer.android.com/design/get-started/principles.html)
Great guide, though.
akshay2000 said:
No ads? How does one go about monetization then? Don't get me wrong. I'm a Windows and Windows Phone developer. I was thinking of porting my apps to Android. I'm just getting started. But I'm using Windows Azure for which I do have to pay for. How should I go about those expenses?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can put ads if you want. Just don't bombard the user with them, place them in a way it does not interrupt or come in the way of the user when he is using your app
phentex said:
Hello there, thanks for this guide.
I am no developer so I don't have to mess with the graphics, but I still often wonder : in android programming, where there will always be the probrem of multiple display size / resolution, why isn't the most primary & most basic guideline to use as much as possible vector graphics instead of bitmap based graphics ? wouldn't it save a huge amount of hassle of having to make gfx resources for different screen sizes ?
thx in advance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With google's plugin for eclipse you can add your graphics in multiple resolutions by Copying your layout from "layout" folder of resources and paste it in the "layout-land", "layout-xlarge" etc.
SahilC said:
Amazing guide! Thanks so much! I'm glad more people love great design.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 4 Beta
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad you liked it
Thank you very much, very useful information.
Thx for it mate I will develop good think
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda app-developers app
Looks good
graphics design
Thank you for this information about web design. Really nice.
Good set of tips for the first version of an app!
The next level of designing should ideally be with testing different design variations via split testing.
Making Decisions
TechMasta said:
Do not let the app make decisions for itself, let it ask the user!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hai,
Thanks for your guide. But I am having a different opinion from one of your warnings.
Let the app make decisions by itself, for example when user deletes an item DELETE it. But do provide an option to UNDO it. Showing another dialog to confirm it, in your words "ask the user", is redundant.
Because providing too many options makes the user overwhelmed in an unexpected way. Choose the best/defaults for your app and provide some ways to configure them [Ex : Colors, Themes, Font size etc]
Ahamed.M said:
Hai,
Thanks for your guide. But I am having a different opinion from one of your warnings.
Let the app make decisions by itself, for example when user deletes an item DELETE it. But do provide an option to UNDO it. Showing another dialog to confirm it, in your words "ask the user", is redundant.
Because providing too many options makes the user overwhelmed in an unexpected way. Choose the best/defaults for your app and provide some ways to configure them [Ex : Colors, Themes, Font size etc]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True. This can also be found in the Android design guidelines:
Decide for me but let me have the final say
Take your best guess and act rather than asking first. Too many choices and decisions make people unhappy. Just in case you get it wrong, allow for 'undo'.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
(Source: http://developer.android.com/design/get-started/principles.html#simplify-my-life)
a
nice
Nice Tips
These tips are very useful. One should keep in mind while dealing with apps whether in Android or iPhone.
Hi guys,
I am currently building a mobile application, but I am at the stage where my programmers are coding the app fine enough, but they are not very creative when it comes to creating the theme or style (which seems to be a common problem).
Now luckily enough, I myself graduated from college as a graphic designer, so I can create the theme (each screenshot) in photoshop and hand it to my developers to implement into the build of the app, BUT my question is to you guys...
Does anyone know of any good websites which have examples of lots of nice app styles and themes???
I also have a "carousel" feature within my app but its looking quite basic at the moment, does anyone know where i can find examples of carousel features???
Having a look at examples of good design work gives me insparation when starting design work.
So can anyone help me with this??
Cheers
Dunc1n
Have a look at this thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2237994
I particularly like this tool: http://android-ui-utils.googlecode.com/hg/asset-studio/dist/index.html
wow cool!!
very cool
Thanks
thanks. this will help us designing our application for school project.
I am pretty new to using Android Studio and app development, but I have to design an app for a project I am working on. Do any of you have any tips about designing just the app without having to work with all of the coding? I don't need the app to work right now, just a design.
if all your doing is designing it then you could just use paper layout how each screen looks and make flow charts to show how button and other things work and link to other places, thats kind of how we do it but in our heads usualy and then we just write the code to show it.
Bethany55 said:
I am pretty new to using Android Studio and app development, but I have to design an app for a project I am working on. Do any of you have any tips about designing just the app without having to work with all of the coding? I don't need the app to work right now, just a design.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello,
I have just worked in Android for more 4 years and with my opinion and experience, I think one of the most important thing is the simplicity, (but its also be hard ), I think you will work in some months to feel it. But have another way to get nice design fast, of course this way is temporally. You can refer to the same kinds of your app in store to compare it to yours, or even other apps not same kind of yours, color or design. And connect your mind to another object. Remember that the simplicity is one of the most important. Hope you will success soon.
Follow the Material Design guidelines Google has posted. It's the easiest way to make a good looking app.
Design is more about what the app does. Without know more detail, my best advice is to keep it simple. Try to find the 1 or 2 real things your app does well and makes those very easy to understand and do. Show the app to strangers and without explanation see if they can use it.
Hi everyone! I wonder when XDA team tries to hack the Samsung Galaxy S20 smart LED cover? Because there's no customization at all... if I want to have incoming calls icons and custom icons!
I'm also interested in this topic, I see a lot of potential in modifying the configuration of this case that in my opinion is great, you could do very interesting things, but first of all it would be good to know if you could do something without being root...
Providing some information
I've had some free time ... I have researched a little about how that app and the shell works, and I discovered some interesting things, at least I see it interesting (I want to clarify first of all that I have no idea how to program for android or how the apk works by issues of permissions signatures etc ...) to begin with, something that has shocked me a lot is that there is a part of programming for the figure of the cactus and there is no code inside, that figure does not appear.Then I have also seen that all the figures or icons programmed are with color #ffffff (pure white) ... seeing the tone of white that emits and seeing the color that the app sends to emit makes me think that the leds of the housing are RGB, maybe it is crazy to think that, but I do not know ... makes me suspicious. Finally I have modified the icon of the coffee changing it of color simply and when trying to save the apk it gives me an error of only reading, I understand that that apk cannot be saved or something I am doing badly... I would like that the community or somebody that it was controlling more helped us