Thanks for mentioning Roboto, I agree that it's a much nicer font. It's also good to know that it isn't too hard to embed custom fonts. I was definitely looking for that answer.
Also, can you elaborate on the "up button"?
Re:How To Design For Android Devices
by georgemcbay on Sunday February 17, 2013 @01:45PM
(#5236183)
My basic issue with the up button is the way you describe it conflates it with the back button, while the two should be considered different things (even though in many cases they will do the same thing). I blame Google more than anyone for this as they themselves conflate the issue mightily by, for example, styling the "up button" so it looks exactly like a back button.
How would you detail the differences between the 2 buttons?
Lets assume for a moment you are using the browser on your phone when a notification pops up alerting you to a new email. Clicking on the notification brings up your mail app and displays the email you just recieved.
At this point if you click the back button you will be returned to the browser session you were previously viewing. If, however, you were to click the up button instead you would remain inside your mail app and go “up” from your message to the inbox.
Just to tack on my simple opinion:
'Up' is in context to the current application.
'Back' is in context the users perspective.
If I'm in the browser and click a mailto link, it opens the email client. The 'up' metaphor should return me to the inbox. The 'back' metaphor would return me to the web browser/webpage. (Did not realize I was using the exact same metaphor as my sibling, sorry)
The "up button" description is a bit oversimplified but probably sufficient for an intro to design post.
Also fonts aren't exactly "device specific" as stated in the post. You can embed your own TTF or OTF fonts into your app as a resource and use them. There are some annoyances to doing this (particularly when viewed from a designer's standpoint, so I'll let the article slide on this one) like the XML layouts won't recognize these fonts but you can programmatically assign the embedded fonts to Android's various text controls very easily.
Of course the hardest part as always when dealing with fonts is the licensing which is slowly getting better but remains years behind the licensing of other digital media formats.
Also on the issue of fonts, he mentions that Droid Sans is popular (since it was previously the default system font) but he should probably have mentioned Roboto, which is the newer and IMO much nicer default font, which is also freely downloadable, the entire set of Android fonts are available for use under the Apache license and can be used freely even in non-Android contexts.