CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androiduser-interface
Roman Minenok
Roman Minenok

Reputation: 9368

Implementing recently introduced Android design and UI guidelines on 2.x versions

Considering Android Design Guidelines announcement what is the best way to make apps which are compliant with them on Android 2.x phones? E.g. what is the best way to implement the ActionBar pattern?

Upvotes: 5

Views: 354

Answers (3)

C.d.
C.d.

Reputation: 10005

I think it's better to use the compatibilty libraries directly, instead of another library based on those. Additionally, refer to the Google I/O App as stated at the bottom of the first link I gave. You can find the best practices about implementing a UI for several devices with compatibility libraries.

Upvotes: 1

Graham Smith
Graham Smith

Reputation: 25757

ActionbarSherlock is a starting point. It includes the compatibility libraries from Google and comes provided as a project rather than JAR offering greater flexibility, should you need to alter anything. Version 4 is on the way which will also include ICS stuff.

As far as I am aware I believe ABS is backward compatible to 1.6, and makes use of the minSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion. It uses an extended version of the holo theme to create a light and dark version that includes the extra ActionBar goodness, which in turn you can extend to style your app.

I recorded a tutorial on YouTube to get people started.

Upvotes: 2

user1234567
user1234567

Reputation: 1842

I found ActionBarSherlock to be pretty good. It will emulate ActionBar on older devices and use the native one on modern ones. It's an extension to Android compatibility library - so you will also get fragments and other ICS stuff.

Upvotes: 1

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