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Changing Honeycomb UI?

P

puppydust

Lurker
Hey there
So I'm pretty torn at the moment between an iPad 2 and holding out for a Samsung Galaxy tab. Nearly everything about the Android side I love, but one thing puts me off.

As a graphic designer, I just love Apple's clean, unfussy user interface. In contrast, I find the Honeycomb GUI pretty uninspiring, and not very appealing to use. It sort of reminds me of being back on a Windows computer.

So my question is >>> Is it possible to change or skin the Honeycomb user interface? Please say yes! :)
 
Some of the best launchers (otherwise known as home replacements) like ADW Launcher and Launcher Pro are optimized to work on honeycomb now. They'll allow you to customize most things. I'd say there'll be a fair few more on the market too that might do what you want.

Go to youtube and search 'launchers for honeycomb'
 
OK, that response was spot on!
I've been looking at launchers and themes and it's really exciting to see what can be done.

Here's an example of a theme I've been looking at;
[THEME] ☢ BigDX Xoom|Zoom Theme ☢ 3G & Wifi Only ☢ Tiamat 1.1 Port is HERE! ☢ 7/1/11 - xda-developers

I think it's pretty ghastly to be honest, but I'm encouraged to see just how far they've gone to change the UI. Is this the sort of thing that I could create using a launcher like Launcher pro?

Also, generally how extensive can things be customized? Is it possible to change things like the system typeface or the input keyboard for instance, or is that getting too deep?
 
Welcome to Android Forums!!

I have an iPad 2, and I'm not sure what you mean by Apple's clean, unfussy user interface. It's just a screen full of icons...pretty useless for a tablet actually.

I'm not a huge fan of the Honeycomb UI, but it's far better than the iOS UI.

I often wish my iPad 2 could run Android. Having such a huge screen, but being able to do nothing with it except populating it with icons is truly frustrating (and stupid).

As to using 3rd party UI, you can definitely do that with Android tablets. ADW, Go Launcher, Launcher Pro, etc are some very popular alternative UI that you can choose on Android. No such luck with iPad 2. :(

You can also change pretty much anything with Android - keyboards, system alerts, lock screens, etc. Android is beautiful because you can do that easily.

In terms of changing icon sizes, I am not sure about that, but you can easily change the size of widgets.
 
I guess I just like the simplicity of the IOS UI. It is restrictive, but I like how that prevents the menu from being overcomplicated. Honeycomb by comparison has bags more functionality but it isn't on par with IOS's slick aesthetics. Not that IOS is perfect mind.

Is changing things like keyboard, alerts, lock screen all stuff that can be done with a launcher? Or do I need a different mod for that?

Finally, how does one get started making custom widgets? Say I wanted to redesign the clock or make a to-do list? tIs that something that requires knowledge of Android SDK?

Thanks for the advice ;-)
 
The iOS UI is simple, easy to use, and slick for all of about 3 weeks, after that you get tired of it being so simple and not being able to do anything useful, except provide you a screen of icons.

Changing keyboard /lockscreen can be done with stock Android, it's separate from the launcher. Not sure about alerts - that is dependent on what ROM is running, etc.

If you want to create a widget from scratch, you probably need to use Android SDK.
 
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