Material Design for Android

 Material Design is a cross-platform design system for Google. Material Design provides detail specs from how text should be shown to how to layout a screen. 

website: Material Design Website

MaterialComponents Theme 

1. implements material design by default. 
2. Uses theme attributes
3. Customisable to your design 

Using Material Design Theme Attributes

<TextView
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:fontFamily="@font/combo"
    style="?attr/textAppearanceHeadline5" OR android:textAppearance="?attr/textAppearanceHeadline5"
    android:text="@string/prasadam" />

Consistent Styling 

Reuse color, size and create consistent padding between our different screens in app. We use following xml files for consistent styling. 

Dimens 

• Short for dimensions 
• Allow you to easily apply consistent styling. 
• Can change dimens based on screen size. 
• Makes updating styles consistently easier. 
• Can be dp for things like margins, heights or padding 
• Sp for font sizes 
• eg. Guidelines 

Colors 

• Material color system 
• Define a few colors here 
• It is used by all views 
• Check the website : Color Tool to generate a automatically generated colors.xml file by picking colors. 

RTL Languages 

• Declare in manifest that app supports mirroring : android:supportsRtl="true"
• We need to use start and end instead of left and right in layout properties such as for padding and margins.

RTL APIs used : 

1. android:layoutDirection, 
2. android:textDirection ,
3. android:textAlignment, 
4. getLayoutDirectionFromLocale()

Accessiblity Tools: Scanner 

It scans your app and suggest improvements such as making touch targets larger, increasing contrasts and providing descriptions on images to make your app more accessible.