introducing honeycomb

IntroducingHoneycomb

Elements of the HC Look & Feel

● Status Bar– At the bottom now– Soft keys for HOME, BACK, etc.

● Action Bar– Combination toolbar, options menu, context

menu, and title bar● Holographic Theme

Enabling the HC Look & Feel● <uses-sdk android:targetSdkVersion=“11” />

– Gives your widgets the Holographic theme, unless you overrode it

– Replaces a MENU button in status bar with your options menu in the action bar

Adding to the Action Bar

● android:showAsAction– ifRoom or always– withText for text+icon vs. just icon

● android:actionLayout– Layout resource to inflate into the action bar

instead of a toolbar button

Fragments: What and Why

● What: Layer Between Activity and View– Designed to create internally-reusable facets of

your UI, to be combined based upon screen size– Can animate on/off, have own BACK stack

● Why: Future Honeycomb-on-Phones– Tries to simplify having single UI definition that

scales up for larger screens

Fragments: User Experience

● Lists With Selection– Normally, touch mode is an action

● Lists Plus Detail Simultaneously– ...on tablets– Phones will have as separate activities due to

limited screen space● Intra-Activity BACK Operation

Fragments: The Mechanics

● Create Fragment Classes– Extend Fragment, ListFragment, etc.– Override onCreateView() to define content

● E.g., inflated layout

– Lifecycle Methods● onActivityCreated()● onSaveInstanceState()● Etc.

Fragments: The Mechanics

● Displaying Fragments– Embed in activity layouts via <fragment>

● Large/xlarge layouts have multiple fragments● Small/normal layouts have single fragment

– Add dynamically via FragmentManager– FragmentTransaction

● Add, replace, remove, etc.● Configure if “transaction” can be reversed via BACK

Fragments: The Mechanics

● Problem: Backwards Compatibility– Fragments firmly in API Level 11– Backwards-compatible fragment

implementation in the works● Android library project● Wrapper API that uses Honeycomb if available or

internal implementation if not● Not available at the time of this writing

App Widgets in Honeycomb

● Adapter-Driven Widget Contents– ListView, GridView, StackView,

AdapterViewFlipper– RemoteViewsService

● Preview Images– Shown to user before app widget is added to

screen

Notifications in Honeycomb

● What We Gain– Control over Growl-style large pop-ups

● What We Lose– number

● What Users Lose– Single clear button – now individual close

buttons per Notification

Animations in Honeycomb

● Animate Arbitrary Properties– E.g, change colors– ValueAnimator and ObjectAnimator– New view properties for rotation, pivot, scale,

etc.– Can generally replace much of classic animation

framework (translation, rotation, etc.)

The Rest of the HC Story

● android:hardwareAccelerated="true"– Speeds things up, but false by default for

compatibility● Rich Clipboard Contents● Drag-and-Drop

– For moving data, not widgets– Same engine as new clipboard contents

The Rest of the HC Story

● Loaders for asynchronous loading of data– Particularly for use with content providers

● New widgets: CalendarView, SearchView, NumberPicker, etc.

● Renderscript for 3D work● Touch events across widgets● And on, and on, and on...

Ice Cream Sandwich

● Current Working Theory– Android 3.1– Summer 2011– Honeycomb UI, other Android 3.0 goodness

brought to phones● Not everything, due to screen size or lower hardware

requirements