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Utterly worthless. This looks like a web designer on crack had too much time to promote the beauty of the new Android. However, from a developer's point of vie

by ge0rg 15y ago

Utterly worthless. This looks like a web designer on crack had too much time to promote the beauty of the new Android. However, from a developer's point of view this is almost unusable. By not providing the according XML/Java code, we are forced to reimplement everything from scratch, making smaller and larger errors, introducing inconsistency and making the look and feel not quite the same between apps. Then again, it fits well with the current way Google is doing UX design (http://minming.posterous.com/google-currents-yet-another-contribution-to-t http://minming.posterous.com/google-currents-yet-another-con...).

manmal 15y ago
Some of the pieces DO work (48dp as hit-target is a good advice, and colour palette etc. is pretty usable). I think it's a good start for all the Android devs (non-designers) who put apps together which are 99% crappy looking. I am quite frustrated however that they do not tell us how to get the same behaviour on older devices - they should release a look-and-feel compatibility library or something. Actionbar is also very inflexible (tabs with buttons in one row, anyone? adjustable tab width?) and making the same code work for 2.x - 4.x devices is just plain spaghetti.
f7u12 15y ago
I found the site by way of an @AndroidDev tweet [1], and I was incredibly frustrated. Their old documentation [2] was completely useless, and this is even worse. Am I supposed to purchase and learn proprietary design tools to develop an effective Android app? This turns me off to the platform as a whole. [1]: https://twitter.com/#!/AndroidDev/status/157570583800971264 https://twitter.com/#!/AndroidDev/status/157570583800971264 [2]: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/index.html http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/i...
drivebyacct2 15y ago
All of the UI elements are available in source provided by Google. Koush (on Twitter) tweeted with Tim Bray about them being split out into a more-easily-consumed library.
- ge0rg 15y ago
  Yes, they are hiding somewhere in the multi-gigabyte Android source code. At least the basic default elements. And their style formatting. And then there are the closed-source Google apps which at least slightly resemble the UX guidelines given on that site. And then there are the more complicated UI elements which provoked the creation of fork projects to allow for the reusability and compatibility not provided by the Google devs, like http://actionbarsherlock.com/ http://actionbarsherlock.com/ and http://viewpagerindicator.com/ http://viewpagerindicator.com/

by ge0rg 15y ago

manmal 15y ago

Some of the pieces DO work (48dp as hit-target is a good advice, and colour palette etc. is pretty usable). I think it's a good start for all the Android devs (non-designers) who put apps together which are 99% crappy looking. I am quite frustrated however that they do not tell us how to get the same behaviour on older devices - they should release a look-and-feel compatibility library or something. Actionbar is also very inflexible (tabs with buttons in one row, anyone? adjustable tab width?) and making the same code work for 2.x - 4.x devices is just plain spaghetti.

f7u12 15y ago

I found the site by way of an @AndroidDev tweet [1], and I was incredibly frustrated. Their old documentation [2] was completely useless, and this is even worse. Am I supposed to purchase and learn proprietary design tools to develop an effective Android app? This turns me off to the platform as a whole. [1]: https://twitter.com/#!/AndroidDev/status/157570583800971264 https://twitter.com/#!/AndroidDev/status/157570583800971264 [2]: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/index.html http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/i...

drivebyacct2 15y ago

All of the UI elements are available in source provided by Google. Koush (on Twitter) tweeted with Tim Bray about them being split out into a more-easily-consumed library.

ge0rg 15y ago
Yes, they are hiding somewhere in the multi-gigabyte Android source code. At least the basic default elements. And their style formatting. And then there are the closed-source Google apps which at least slightly resemble the UX guidelines given on that site. And then there are the more complicated UI elements which provoked the creation of fork projects to allow for the reusability and compatibility not provided by the Google devs, like http://actionbarsherlock.com/ http://actionbarsherlock.com/ and http://viewpagerindicator.com/ http://viewpagerindicator.com/