Invite all known Nextcloud android developers

[stefan-niedermann]

Hello there :open_hands:

i recently had the idea to develop some basic documentation for common style patterns for android apps which are within the Nextcloud ecosystem.

The idea is, that the User Experience across all the apps should be similar and feel common.

Of course it is very basic a the moment with just some ideas, but i wanted to get some feedback first, before i start writing down thousands of words and put too much effort into it.

Please let me know what you all think about this or if you know any already existing resources.

@jancborchardt @tobiasKaminsky @AndyScherzinger @mario @desperateCoder @daper @nerzhul

[jancborchardt]

Also cc @David-Development @dan0xii @ardevd and who else is active from https://github.com/orgs/nextcloud/teams/android/members ? :)

@stefan-niedermann What are some specific things you have in mind for this? Generally we should try and follow Material Design guidelines, so for example where are parts where we don’t right now? Also, anything which is already covered by the general design guidelines (very high-level though) at https://nextcloud.com/design/ ?

[stefan-niedermann]

Concrete samples are already in the repository, e.g. the layout of empty content views (currently looking different on any app), app icon and resources to built one (with the blue background and some kind of tutorial), Theming (like use the theme of the cloud instance if possible, fallback to NC blue), settings (location and content, currently the news app has for example a "settings" and a "server-settings"-entry which is confusing..…

[tobiasKaminsky]

I reall like the idea :+1:

What also comes into my mind is multi-account support, which is e.g. on News not available, but also behaves different in Deck, Files and Talk (how to switch it).

[jancborchardt]

Right right! :) So those are some different points at different levels:

• E.g. for empty content view we should follow Material Design like at https://material.io/design/communication/empty-states.html
• For multi-account switcher, the Nextcloud Files app does it like Gmail for Android, which is good. This is also referenced in https://material.io/components/navigation-drawer/ → section "Header (optional)"
• Settings also has pretty good Material design documentation: https://material.io/design/platform-guidance/android-settings.html – for apps which use a left drawer, the entry "Settings" should be placed in there. For apps which do not use a drawer, it should be placed in the top right 3-dot menu. (Talk e.g. does not even have a 3-dot menu, which is simple and good, there a tap on the avatar goes to "Settings".)
• App icons will get much simpler, as we will cut the dots from the background with 18 :) Does it need to be a plain background? In any case yes, good to standardize e.g. also saying that circle should be the default if possible to set that.
• Theming: Yup, we should have consistent ways of doing this. The basic thing is to use the proper primary color as set by the server for the header and link color. This needs to take into account contrast of elements displayed in the header, so that they invert when it’s too light. Also too light link text needs to cut off at a certain grey. @juliushaertl where are these values for the server, we could share those?
• Another thing similar to theming we talked about before: Sharing dark-mode style?

[tobiasKaminsky]

Nice @jancborchardt. But can we split this up into several issues? And then discuss each in its own issue, and when agreed, we put this into the documentation/guidelines?

Having this all written down might be the easiest part for you, but not if we want to discuss it.

[jancborchardt]

Sure thing, whatever is easiest for coordination. :) Simply replied to all of the points brought up in the issue here.

[dasbiswajit]

Hey @stefan-niedermann Thanks for this. Is there any way to give me a pair of hands/Heads-up/idea for this issue.

• I am planning to use Android Treeview for displaying a folder structure!
• There is an unfinished branch here. Day to day attempt is noted there. Any help or Pull requests (🥇) are welcome!

Thanks Biswajit Das

[stefan-niedermann]

@dasbiswajit i will check it out later and have a look - we can talk about it in the talk chatroom later.

[juliushaertl]

Theming: Yup, we should have consistent ways of doing this. The basic thing is to use the proper primary color as set by the server for the header and link color. This needs to take into account contrast of elements displayed in the header, so that they invert when it’s too light. Also too light link text needs to cut off at a certain grey. @juliushaertl where are these values for the server, we could share those?

The capabilities endpoint provides most of what you might need:

• color is the primary color as set by the theming app
• color-element is the same as color except if it is too bright, then it falls back to a gray
• color-text will be the text color to be used for text on primary background

[dasbiswajit]

@dasbiswajit i will check it out later and have a look - we can talk about it in the talk chatroom later.

Sure. Please add me in the chatroom

[stefan-niedermann]

@dasbiswajit i tried to contact you several times via Talk - https://cloud.nextcloud.com/call/xs25tz5y - i know you have an account and are invited, is something wrong?

Edit: fixed URL

[dan0xii]

I would be happy to contribute where ever I can.

[dasbiswajit]

@stefan-niedermann I a in chat room. Got it.

[dasbiswajit]

@dan0xii Thanks. I have asked in the chat. Happy to setup a call.