Free Android UI library & component roundup

Android platform has managed to form a massive and active community of developers in just few years. Many community driven projects are now maturing to the stage that they can be used even on commercial production software without having to worry about quality.

I'm listing here free and open source Android UI libraries and components that I know of. If you know any that you would recommend please leave a comment, tweet me or email me and I'll add it to the list.

UI component libraries
GreenDroid
Project website: http://greendroid.cyrilmottier.com/
Example app market link


This project provides implementation for following UI design patterns:

• Action Bar
• Quick Actions
• Workspaces
• Dynamic List

+ many more useful components


ActionBarSherlock
Project website: http://actionbarsherlock.com/
Example app market link

Until Google's APIs for action bars for phones come out with ICS this project is the project to use.

Jake has lately moved his project beyond just Action Bars. There are components for workspaces and more.



Android Compatibility Package
Project website:
http://developer.android.com/sdk/compatibility-library.html
This is an official extension for Android libraries from Google. It contains a lot of very useful APIs. The package also contains implementation for workspaces UI design pattern.


UI components
iosched
Project website: http://code.google.com/p/iosched/
This is the official Google I|O app (also used for GDDs). The app implements a lot of UI design patterns and has beenused as the reference implementation by Google's Android dev advocates.
I especially recommend using implementation of the Dashboard UI design pattern from this app.
(Google code link to Dashboard.java )

Android-ViewflowProject website: https://github.com/pakerfeldt/android-viewflow This project's implementation of Workspaces UI design pattern looks and feels very close to what for example Google docs is using.


android-coverflow
Project website: http://code.google.com/p/android-coverflow/ This project can be used to implement a cover flow. Check out their video on the project site for more info.

[Update 2011-10-03. Thanks: Jake (@JakeWharton ), Akshay (@akshaydashrath ), David (@dcaunt )]

android-viewbadger
Project website: https://github.com/jgilfelt/android-viewbadger
This project lets devs add badges to views without having to change layout files.


android-pulltorefresh
Project website: https://github.com/johannilsson/android-pulltorefresh
This project implements dynamic list / pull to refresh UI design pattern.


Android-ViewPagerIndicator
Project website: https://github.com/JakeWharton/Android-ViewPagerIndicator
This project can be used to implement workspaces UI design pattern.

 

 

from:http://java.dzone.com/articles/free-android-ui-library