Announcing UI for Android Q3 2014
A common problem that mobile developers and designers face is how to deal with the fragmentation of device screen sizes. The constant introduction of more phones, tablets, wearables and TVs, makes building amazing user experience on all devices even more challenging.
Nevertheless, a lot of developers felt a relief when Google introduced the Android 5.0 Lollipop - the most significant visual update since Ice Cream Sandwich. A central part in the release plays Material Design - a set of guidelines providing systematic and detailed approach on design and interaction fundamentals such as animation, color, typography, layout principles and structure, components and essential patterns.
We have been closely following the development of Material Design since we first got our hands on it. In the blog post below, you can read how we re-imagined a Windows Phone app to make it scalable across existing and future form factors and platforms following the new Android UI guidelines.
Right around Google IO 2014, we had the first official release of our Android tools which included an advanced Charting framework, a Calendar, an AppFeedback control.
The second release of UI for Android comes packed with new features and one brand new control.
Download UI for Android now or continue reading to see what has been included in the latest release.
The pan and zoom functionality now allows for fluid interaction with large amounts of data. The Chart uses its virtualization mechanism to draw the data points on demand, contributing to highly efficient performance on the mobile device. Further performance optimizations can be achieved through the deferred zooming mechanism as it allows developers to specify the exact moment when the chart refreshes.
Scatter Series are now supported to allow you to show the relationship of multiple values along a common numerical x- and y-axis.
Bubble Series, a variation of the Scatter series, now allow you to display three types of data along x- and y-axes, using bubble size as a third dimension. A typical scenario is when you have to show the correlation between life expectancy, fertility rate and population of countries.
With Outer and Inner Labels you can now define the position of the labels relative to the axis and put them either inside the plotting area or outside. This feature is particularly useful in scenarios where conserving screen space is of high importance.
As with any release we strive to make the Chart faster. During the last few months we further improved the drawing capabilities of the control to enable you to display large amounts of data in real-time and offer the end user fast and fluid interactivity through Pan (Scroll) and Zoom (Pinch) gestures.
Calendar
The Calendar employs intuitive gestures to cover various selection scenarios enabling users to select a single date, multiple dates or a range of dates.
ScrollViewer
The Telerik ScrollViewer extends the native Android ScrollViewer by adding support for bi-directional scrolling i.e. horizontally and vertically at the same time.
Examples App
The bundle comes with an app that demonstrates various usages of the controls. Source code is available as well.
During Q3 2014, we also made it possible for C# developers to use UI for Android in the context of Xamarin. Every control that is included in this release is Xamarin ready.
Providing a consistent cross-platform story is high on our list of priorities so with Evolve 2014, the annual Xamarin conference, we also announced Xamarin wrappers for our iOS controls as well as a Xamarin.Forms version of our Charting library.
Read how to reuse your existing c# skills to build native iOS, Android and Windows Store apps with Telerik UI for Xamarin.
Pricing
UI for Android is part of the Telerik Platform. Check out the pricing options.
Nevertheless, a lot of developers felt a relief when Google introduced the Android 5.0 Lollipop - the most significant visual update since Ice Cream Sandwich. A central part in the release plays Material Design - a set of guidelines providing systematic and detailed approach on design and interaction fundamentals such as animation, color, typography, layout principles and structure, components and essential patterns.
We have been closely following the development of Material Design since we first got our hands on it. In the blog post below, you can read how we re-imagined a Windows Phone app to make it scalable across existing and future form factors and platforms following the new Android UI guidelines.
Right around Google IO 2014, we had the first official release of our Android tools which included an advanced Charting framework, a Calendar, an AppFeedback control.
The second release of UI for Android comes packed with new features and one brand new control.
Download UI for Android now or continue reading to see what has been included in the latest release.
Chart
Smooth Interaction and Deferred ZoomingThe pan and zoom functionality now allows for fluid interaction with large amounts of data. The Chart uses its virtualization mechanism to draw the data points on demand, contributing to highly efficient performance on the mobile device. Further performance optimizations can be achieved through the deferred zooming mechanism as it allows developers to specify the exact moment when the chart refreshes.
Scatter Series are now supported to allow you to show the relationship of multiple values along a common numerical x- and y-axis.
Bubble Series, a variation of the Scatter series, now allow you to display three types of data along x- and y-axes, using bubble size as a third dimension. A typical scenario is when you have to show the correlation between life expectancy, fertility rate and population of countries.
With Outer and Inner Labels you can now define the position of the labels relative to the axis and put them either inside the plotting area or outside. This feature is particularly useful in scenarios where conserving screen space is of high importance.
As with any release we strive to make the Chart faster. During the last few months we further improved the drawing capabilities of the control to enable you to display large amounts of data in real-time and offer the end user fast and fluid interactivity through Pan (Scroll) and Zoom (Pinch) gestures.
Calendar
The Calendar employs intuitive gestures to cover various selection scenarios enabling users to select a single date, multiple dates or a range of dates.
The Telerik ScrollViewer extends the native Android ScrollViewer by adding support for bi-directional scrolling i.e. horizontally and vertically at the same time.
Examples App
The bundle comes with an app that demonstrates various usages of the controls. Source code is available as well.
During Q3 2014, we also made it possible for C# developers to use UI for Android in the context of Xamarin. Every control that is included in this release is Xamarin ready.
Providing a consistent cross-platform story is high on our list of priorities so with Evolve 2014, the annual Xamarin conference, we also announced Xamarin wrappers for our iOS controls as well as a Xamarin.Forms version of our Charting library.
Read how to reuse your existing c# skills to build native iOS, Android and Windows Store apps with Telerik UI for Xamarin.
Pricing
UI for Android is part of the Telerik Platform. Check out the pricing options.
About the Author
Kiril Stanoev
Hi, I'm Kiril and I'm the Product Manager of Telerik UI for Android, Windows Universal and Windows Phone. Feel free to ping me on +KirilStanoev or @KirilStanoev
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