Professional Android 4 Application Development, 3rd Edition

Chapter 11

Advanced User Experience

What's in this Chapter?

Resolution independence and designing for every screen

Creating image assets in XML

Making applications accessible

Using the Text-to-Speech and speech recognition libraries

Using animations

Controlling hardware acceleration

Using Surface Views

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In Chapter 4, “Building User Interfaces,” you learned the basics of creating user interfaces (UIs) in Android with an introduction to Activities, Fragments, layouts, and Views. In Chapter 10, “Expanding the User Experience,” you expanded the user experience through using the Action Bar, menu system, Dialogs, and Notifications.

It's important to think beyond the bounds of necessity and create applications that combine purpose with beauty and simplicity, even when they provide complex functionality.

As you design apps to work with Android, consider these goals: Enchant me. Simplify my life. Make me amazing.

—Android Design Creative Vision, http://developer.android.com/design/get-started/creative-vision.html

This chapter introduces you to some best practices and techniques to create user experiences that are compelling and aesthetically pleasing on a diverse range of devices and for an equally diverse range of users.

You start with an introduction to the best practices for creating resolution- and density-independent UIs, and how to use Drawables to create scalable image assets, before learning how to ensure your applications are accessible and use the ...