Implementing recently introduced Android design and UI guidelines on 2.x versions

Question

Considering Android Design Guidelines announcement what is the best way to make apps which are compliant with them on Android 2.x phones? E.g. what is the best way to implement the ActionBar pattern?

Answer 1

ActionbarSherlock is a starting point. It includes the compatibility libraries from Google and comes provided as a project rather than JAR offering greater flexibility, should you need to alter anything. Version 4 is on the way which will also include ICS stuff.

As far as I am aware I believe ABS is backward compatible to 1.6, and makes use of the minSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion. It uses an extended version of the holo theme to create a light and dark version that includes the extra ActionBar goodness, which in turn you can extend to style your app.

I recorded a tutorial on YouTube to get people started.

Answer 2

I think it's better to use the compatibilty libraries directly, instead of another library based on those. Additionally, refer to the Google I/O App as stated at the bottom of the first link I gave. You can find the best practices about implementing a UI for several devices with compatibility libraries.