05-12-2015, 01:35 PM
There were a couple things that drove the decision to move to the Lollipop theme:
1) I needed to update the tools I use for development, as Google is only going to support Android Studio in the future
2) I needed to update the libraries I was using so that I had the latest fixes from Google. This also ensured that users running Lollipop devices would see the lollipop theme instead of the old Holo theme in MS Pro
3) I wanted to keep a more consistent theme between different OS versions,. Users will see the material theme wherever it's supported (dialogs, widgets, etc), but some screens such as the settings screen will be different depending upon the OS version. Google hasn't added support to make this consistent across OS versions yet.
4) By and large, people seem to really like the material design, so my hope was that it would be an improvement over the old Holo theme. The verdict is still out on this when it comes to MS Pro though.
I'm going to be tweaking some things over time when it makes sense. Lollipop dropdowns (called Spinners) don't work well if nothing is selected, so I may change the selections on the song editor fields tab to use a different control that more clearly shows where to tap. I need to do more testing on devices that aren't running Lollipop to see if other things need to be adjusted as well.
As far as the colors, the darker blue works really well with the white text, as it makes the text stand out really well. The lighter blue used in the tab selection would be a lot less pleasant with white text (I will test this to be sure). It may look nice if I switched to a darker text color though. I don't think this color difference really matters though - if anything, I think it's probably better that there is a difference, as one is just a background color, whereas the other signifies a current selection.
Mike
1) I needed to update the tools I use for development, as Google is only going to support Android Studio in the future
2) I needed to update the libraries I was using so that I had the latest fixes from Google. This also ensured that users running Lollipop devices would see the lollipop theme instead of the old Holo theme in MS Pro
3) I wanted to keep a more consistent theme between different OS versions,. Users will see the material theme wherever it's supported (dialogs, widgets, etc), but some screens such as the settings screen will be different depending upon the OS version. Google hasn't added support to make this consistent across OS versions yet.
4) By and large, people seem to really like the material design, so my hope was that it would be an improvement over the old Holo theme. The verdict is still out on this when it comes to MS Pro though.
I'm going to be tweaking some things over time when it makes sense. Lollipop dropdowns (called Spinners) don't work well if nothing is selected, so I may change the selections on the song editor fields tab to use a different control that more clearly shows where to tap. I need to do more testing on devices that aren't running Lollipop to see if other things need to be adjusted as well.
As far as the colors, the darker blue works really well with the white text, as it makes the text stand out really well. The lighter blue used in the tab selection would be a lot less pleasant with white text (I will test this to be sure). It may look nice if I switched to a darker text color though. I don't think this color difference really matters though - if anything, I think it's probably better that there is a difference, as one is just a background color, whereas the other signifies a current selection.
Mike