I just started designing my app for Android L Material theme. I understand that we have to first check whether our existing apps work fine with the ART, the new WebView and all that, but going a step further I want my app to be release-ready when Android L is officially released. But I see that there's very little documentation and I'm not able to get around to find answers to some questions I have -
Is the material theme itself going to be available for older versions of Android?
Is the Android L SDK that's publicly available right now good enough to start building apps using it? I found a few posts on stack overflow where commons guy has said to hold off until Android L is released.
There are a few things that are mentioned in the design specs but there's no documentation on it. Like "Toolbar", for example, is replacing the "ActionBar" according to Google IO 2014 App's source. But why is it not mentioned anywhere in the Android L getting started page? And is it going to be backward compatible with older versions through support library?
Any sample code on how to achieve extended app bar as mentioned in this page?
Material Design works well for apps that use standard components — buttons, menus, icons, drawers, modals etc. — but if you are developing a game or some other custom digital experience, it is not really the right tool for the job.
Updated October 28, 2021: Material Design 3 is now live! Read about our latest resources, guidelines, and code in our new post. Today at I/O we unveiled Material You, a radical new way to think about design. Material You will transform design for Android, for Google, and for the entire tech industry.
Google says Chrome OS isn't going away, with Material Design refresh inbound. Last week, a report from the Wall Street Journal claimed that Google planned to effectively merge Chrome OS with Android, with the mobile OS taking lead and powering everything from phones to laptops.
Consistency and Uniqueness And there is a high level of consistency between Bootstrap-based websites and applications, making them very intuitive and user-friendly but at the same time not unique. When you think of creating a different and truly unique website, Material is definitely better than Bootstrap.
Is the material theme itself going to be available for older versions of Android?
There have been some comments from Google suggesting that they'll be doing some things in this area. Not everything is strictly possible to offer in the form of a backport. Hence, we won't really know until they ship.
Is the Android L SDK that's publicly available right now good enough to start building apps using it? I found a few posts on stack overflow where commons guy has said to hold off until Android L is released.
The reason for my advice is that we have no idea how stable the L APIs are, particularly with respect to Material Design. If you want to experiment with L for that sort of thing, great! But I'd leave such stuff on a development branch until the next shipping version of Android.
But why is it not mentioned anywhere in the Android L getting started page?
There are lots of things not mentioned in the docs, particularly in API level release notes. That's normal for Android, and it is why I and others write blog posts like this one and this one.
And is it going to be backward compatible with older versions through support library?
That has not been announced. We'll find out when the next production version of Android ships.
Any sample code on how to achieve extended app bar as mentioned in this page?
I am not aware of any, though I haven't been keeping an eye out for it either. My personal aesthetic says "yuck" for that particular aspect of Material Design. :-)
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