Android™ Tablet Application Development For Dummies®

Making yourself seen

During your application's lifetime, you will need to get ahold of your user. Sometimes you need to do this in a way that requires the user to interact with your application before he can continue, and other times you only need to quickly notify a user that something happened (such as “This item is saved” when they click on a Save button). Another option is to inform the user that something has happened by placing an icon in the notification bar for later review. Use this option if the user's attention is not needed immediately.

Sitting at the notification bar

The notification bar is the little area at the bottom-right side of the tablet. This inconspicuous location allows developers to place icons in the bar so that the user can recognize that some type of action needs to take place. For example, the user may be reading an e-mail, and a task reminder application (the one you write later in this book) may need to remind the user that a task needs to be reviewed. You can use the notification bar to place passive action items in front of the user.

Good-looking toast

Toast notifications are small blurbs of information that pop up in front of a user and do not require end-user interaction. A toast notification persists onscreen for a few seconds before it fades away. Here's a good example: A user taps a Save button, and a small message appears informing the user that the item has been saved. The user does not have to see this message (nothing bad would happen if ...