Resources for styling Android apps


Here are some notes I took while looking at styles and themes on Android:

First I read the commonsware pdf section on styles and themes:

Android 3.6.pdf page 319 - 326. I find this set of PDFs very useful. Well worth the money.

Android developer docs:
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/themes.html

This section is very short for such a complicated topic, but it does give a link to the locations on GIT where the source of theme.xml and style.xml are stored. Looking through these takes a while, but it worth the effort.

For example to find out what styles are available for progress bars go to this URL:
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/R.attr.html
and search for progressbar.
(Possibles are horizontal, title, small and large. Inverse used black on white background.)

Inheritance is a very useful aspect of styles too. Usually you don't want to start from scratch. Just use the parent attribute to point to a style that you want to inherit from (Theme.Light for example) and then override what you need to with code like this:
style="?android:attr/progressBarStyle"
This sets the style to be the value of the android:attr/progressBarStyle style from the parent.
(These are both just pastes from the end of the developer.android.com theme and styles section.

This is handy if you are looking around for a standard icon to use in your app. They all look pretty good and avoid the need for graphic design on an early stage project. 


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