Android platform has managed to form a massive and active community of developers in just few years. Many community driven projects are now maturing to the stage that they can be used even on commercial production software without having to worry about quality.
GreenDroid
Project website: http://greendroid.cyrilmottier.com/
Example app market link
This project provides implementation for following UI design patterns:
ActionBarSherlock
Project website: http://actionbarsherlock.com/
Example app market link
Until Google's APIs for action bars for phones come out with ICS this project is the project to use.
Jake has lately moved his project beyond just Action Bars. There are components for workspaces and more.
This is an official extension for Android libraries from Google. It contains a lot of very useful APIs. The package also contains implementation for workspaces UI design pattern.
This is the official Google I|O app (also used for GDDs). The app implements a lot of UI design patterns and has beenused as the reference implementation by Google's Android dev advocates.
I especially recommend using implementation of the Dashboard UI design pattern from this app.
(Google code link to Dashboard.java)
I'm listing here free and open source Android UI libraries and components that I know of. If you know any that you would recommend please leave a comment, tweet me or email me and I'll add it to the list.
UI component libraries
Project website: http://greendroid.cyrilmottier.com/Example app market link
This project provides implementation for following UI design patterns:
- Action Bar
- Quick Actions
- Workspaces
- Dynamic List
+ many more useful components
ActionBarSherlockProject website: http://actionbarsherlock.com/
Example app market link
Until Google's APIs for action bars for phones come out with ICS this project is the project to use.
Jake has lately moved his project beyond just Action Bars. There are components for workspaces and more.
Android Compatibility Package
Project website:
http://developer.android.com/sdk/compatibility-library.html
http://developer.android.com/sdk/compatibility-library.html
This is an official extension for Android libraries from Google. It contains a lot of very useful APIs. The package also contains implementation for workspaces UI design pattern.
UI components
This is the official Google I|O app (also used for GDDs). The app implements a lot of UI design patterns and has beenused as the reference implementation by Google's Android dev advocates.
I especially recommend using implementation of the Dashboard UI design pattern from this app.
(Google code link to Dashboard.java)
Android-Viewflow
Project website: https://github.com/pakerfeldt/android-viewflow
This project's implementation of Workspaces UI design pattern looks and feels very close to what for example Google docs is using.
[Update 2011-10-03. Thanks: Jake (@JakeWharton), Akshay (@akshaydashrath), David (@dcaunt)]
android-viewbadger
Project website: https://github.com/jgilfelt/android-viewbadger
This project lets devs add badges to views without having to change layout files.
android-pulltorefresh
Project website: https://github.com/johannilsson/android-pulltorefresh
This project implements dynamic list / pull to refresh UI design pattern.
Android-ViewPagerIndicator
Project website: https://github.com/JakeWharton/Android-ViewPagerIndicator
This project can be used to implement workspaces UI design pattern.
Example app market link
This project can be used to implement a cover flow. Check out their video on the project site for more info.
[Update 2011-10-03. Thanks: Jake (@JakeWharton), Akshay (@akshaydashrath), David (@dcaunt)]
android-viewbadger
Project website: https://github.com/jgilfelt/android-viewbadger
This project lets devs add badges to views without having to change layout files.
android-pulltorefresh
Project website: https://github.com/johannilsson/android-pulltorefresh
This project implements dynamic list / pull to refresh UI design pattern.
Android-ViewPagerIndicator
Project website: https://github.com/JakeWharton/Android-ViewPagerIndicator
This project can be used to implement workspaces UI design pattern.
Example app market link
Hi, thanks for your blog, a question, how can you implement an action bar across all the activities within an application? According to all the components previously seen you have to include the component on each XML that serves as a layout for a given activity, any ideas?
ReplyDeleteThanks in advance!
Could I humbly suggest Metawidget (http://metawidget.org)? It's a different kind of UI library from the ones you list here, but may be of interest.
ReplyDeleteIf you get chance to try it out, I'd be most grateful for your feedback.
Richard, you serious? Those widgets look absolutely horrendous!
ReplyDeleteI have read your post and thankful to you that you provide free android UI library which is very helpful to developer..
DeleteSeriously thanks very much, very helpful post
ReplyDelete