Professional Android, 4th Edition

13Implementing a Modern Android User Experience

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Creating and applying themes to user interfaces
• Creating Menus and app bar actions
• Using Action Views and Action Providers
• Customizing the app bar using Toolbars
• Implementing advanced scrolling techniques
• Utilizing tabs, bottom navigation bars, and the navigation drawer for effective navigation
• Alerting the user with Dialogs, Toasts, and Snackbars

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The code downloads for this chapter are found at www.wrox.com. The code for this chapter is divided into the following major examples:

• Snippets_ch13.zip
• Earthquake_ch13_part1.zip
• Earthquake_ch13_part2.zip

THE MODERN ANDROID UI

To help you create a user interface (UI) that’s stylish, easy to use, and that offers a user experience consistent with the underlying platform and other applications, this chapter demonstrates techniques to expand the user experience beyond layouts and UI components.

This starts with an exploration of the AppCompat API, provided as part of the Android Support Library, which makes it possible to create a consistent, modern look for your app across all Android API levels using themes.

The app bar, introduced in Chapter 5, is an important component of your application. In this chapter you learn how to customize it further through the addition of Menus and actions. You also learn to utilize Toolbars to replace the app bar within your own layouts, and to take advantage of the functionality it ...