I've been thinking about themes. I have read and watched a lot of how themes are great and why you should do them, but don't yet have a methodical way of doing them. And by doing it, I actually mean "give proper instructions to a designer". I am not the right person to do it. Of course, maybe I am overcomplicating it and I could get this all done in half a day.
At this point, I have incorporated ActionBarSherlock into an app. I am confident that the app follows Android Design Guidelines - from the actionbar up, that is. Anything below the actionbar follows the Holo Theme on 4x and looks inconsistent on 2.x. Here are the guidelines from Android Design. - Pick the system theme that best matches the needs and design aesthetics for your app. Ok, I choose the Holo Dark Theme. But wait, that is only guaranteed to be there for 4.0 and above. To my knowledge there is no compatibility library for the Holo Themes. - If your desire is to have a more distinct look for your app, Maybe, but I need to know the cost/benefit. Usability is a much higher priority than "distinct look". - using one of the system themes as a starting point for your customizations is a good idea. The system themes provide a solid foundation on top of which you can selectively implement your own visual stylings. Now this makes a lot of sense. But, wait, you can't do that, because the system themes are only guaranteed on 4x and above. If I wanted my theme to have predictable results on 2x, I think there are many more steps. If I look at, for example. \platforms\android-16\data It contains 5646 files and 66.4 Megabytes. Not all of that is the Holo theme(s) of course. Probably only a very small subset. For reference, ActionBarSherlock uses about .37 Meg and 277 files to make the actionbar look consistent. So if I wanted just have my app use the Holo Dark theme all the way through 2.x, I think I would have to do this. 1. Go through the themes.xml and extract all the attributes of Holo Dark. 2. Go through styles.xml and extract all the attributes referenced by those attributes in #1. 3. Go through the drawables folder to extract the xml files reference by one and two. 4. Extract all the png files and .9.png files that are referenced by anything above. If I want the truly distinct look, then I would add the additional steps. 5. Give all the files above to a designer to edit the images and attributes until they all look distinct. 6. Give them some way to test it if they don't happen to be a developer. Am I on the right track here? Has anyone already done steps 1-4? How many files, lines of xml, were there? (I'll hire you by the way). At this point in the industry, I don't see there is a way to buy an Android App Theme the way you can buy a Wordpress theme, or hire an Android Designer the way you could probably hire an iPhone Designer ( no personal experience). All of this may encourage me to not over invest in making 2.x look good. While 2.x is still about 60% of total users, two thirds of *new installs* are already using 4.x. Of course, that makes me vulnerable if the Android Design Police happen to try my app on 2.x. Nathan -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
