Book Image

Hands-On Android UI Development

By : Jason Morris
Book Image

Hands-On Android UI Development

By: Jason Morris

Overview of this book

A great user interface (UI) can spell the difference between success and failure for any new application. This book will show you not just how to code great UIs, but how to design them as well. It will take novice Android developers on a journey, showing them how to leverage the Android platform to produce stunning Android applications. Begin with the basics of creating Android applications and then move on to topics such as screen and layout design. Next, learn about techniques that will help improve performance for your application. Also, explore how to create reactive applications that are fast, animated, and guide the user toward their goals with minimal distraction. Understand Android architecture components and learn how to build your application to automatically respond to changes made by the user. Great platforms are not always enough, so this book also focuses on creating custom components, layout managers, and 2D graphics. Also, explore many tips and best practices to ease your UI development process. By the end, you'll be able to design and build not only amazing UIs, but also systems that provide the best possible user experience.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
13
Activity Lifecycle

Navigation menus


Sometimes, you need to provide your user with a broad set of navigation options that won't fit into a set of tabs. This is where a hidden navigation menu, sometimes called a hamburger menu, becomes useful. This menu pattern was once popular to put as a sort of main menu, available on every screen in your application. However, navigation menus hide options, and they often encourage sloppy navigation design, because they provide a space where any navigation items can be dumped. It's better to try and avoid any form of hidden navigation until you're absolutely sure that you need it.

They can be useful when they augment other navigation patterns (such as tabs), and are used to offer seldom used or advanced functionality that the user is unlikely to access every day. For example, on a photo gallery screen, a hidden menu might be used to access the ability to create new labels, access photos that have been deleted, and to access settings and help.

Let's add a navigation menu to...