Navigation Drawer (Google+ vs. YouTube)

405
votes

Does anyone know how to implement a sliding menu like some of the top apps of today?

Other Stack Overflow questions haven't had any answers on how to do this, so I'm trying to gather as much info to help out others. All the applications I mention below do a great job of implementing the slide menu.

1. Google Plus (as of 7/7/12)

Google+ slide out menu screenshot

You can only go from the first screen to the second screen by clicking the G+ logo in the upper left hand corner. Notice that the entire screen moves from it's position and get's nudged to the right side of the screen (including the action bar). To get back to the first screen you can either slide the right side back into focus or you can click the G+ icon again.

2. YouTube (as of 7/7/12)

YouTube slide out menu screenshot

You can go from the first screen to second screen using two methods. Either click the YouTube logo in the upper left, or you can use a swipe gesture to move it to the right. This is already different from the G+ app. Secondly, you can see that the action bar stays put (Unlike G+). Lastly, to get the original screen back it works just like G+.

5
androidandroid-layoutuser-interfacenavigation-drawer
By the looks of it, not many people have had experience with working on something like this. I suggest trying to implement something yourself and coming to SO with specific problems you may encounter. – David Titarenco
Yeah, that's why I posted a SO question in other that I believe deserves a bit more attention. I just wonder if there is someone out there that has successfully accomplished this and would love to share their wisdom. – EGHDK
@EGHDK Check out this series of articles: android.cyrilmottier.com/?p=658 – Alex Lockwood
I answered this question a while ago, but I'm back to re-emphasize that Prixing has the best fly-out menu out there... by far. It's absolutely beautiful, perfectly smooth, and it puts Facebook, Google+, and YouTube to shame. EverNote is pretty good too... but still not as perfect as Prixing. Check out this series of posts on how the flyout menu was implemented (from none other than the head developer at Prixing himself!). – Alex Lockwood
With android support package revision 13( may 2013), there is DrawerLayout for creating a Navigation Drawer that can be pulled in from the edge of a window. And, navigation drawer is a design pattern now. developer.android.com/tools/extras/support-library.html – Wubao Li

5 Answers

153
votes

Edit #3:

The Navigation Drawer pattern is officially described in the Android documentation!

enter image description here Check out the following links:

  • Design docs can be found here.
  • Developer docs can be found here.

Edit #2:

Roman Nurik (an Android design engineer at Google) has confirmed that the recommended behavior is to not move the Action Bar when opening the drawer (like the YouTube app). See this Google+ post.

Edit #1:

I answered this question a while ago, but I'm back to re-emphasize that Prixing has the best fly-out menu out there... by far. It's absolutely beautiful, perfectly smooth, and it puts Facebook, Google+, and YouTube to shame. EverNote is pretty good too... but still not as perfect as Prixing. Check out this series of posts on how the flyout menu was implemented (from none other than the head developer at Prixing himself!).

Original Answer:

Adam Powell and Richard Fulcher talk about this at 49:47 - 52:50 in the Google I/O talk titled "Navigation in Android".

To summarize their answer, as of the date of this posting the slide out navigation menu is not officially part of the Android application design standard. As you have probably discovered, there's currently no native support for this feature, but there was talk about making this an addition to an upcoming revision of the support package.

With regards to the YouTube and G+ apps, it does seem odd that they behave differently. My best guess is that the reason the YouTube app fixes the position of the action bar is,

  1. One of the most important navigational options for users using the YouTube app is search, which is performed in the SearchView in the action bar. It would make sense to make the action bar static in this regard, since it would allow the user to always have the option to search for new videos.

  2. The G+ app uses a ViewPager to display its content, so making the pull out menu specific to the layout content (i.e. everything under the action bar) wouldn't make much sense. Swiping is supposed to provide a means of navigating between pages, not a means of global navigation. This might be why they decided to do it differently in the G+ app than they did in the YouTube app.

    On another note, check out the Google Play app for another version of the "pull out menu" (when you are at the left most page, swipe left and a pull out, "half-page" menu will appear).

You're right in that this isn't very consistent behavior, but it doesn't seem like there is a 100% consensus within the Android team on how this behavior should be implemented yet. I wouldn't be surprised if in the future the apps are updated so that the navigation in both apps are identical (they seemed very keen on making navigation consistent across all Google-made apps in the talk).

15
votes

Just recently I forked a current Github project called "RibbonMenu" and edited it to fit my needs:

https://github.com/jaredsburrows/RibbonMenu

What's the Purpose

  • Ease of Access: Allow easy access to a menu that slides in and out
  • Ease of Implementation: Update the same screen using minimal amount of code
  • Independency: Does not require support libraries such as ActionBarSherlock
  • Customization: Easy to change colors and menus

What's New

  • Changed the sliding animation to match Facebook and Google+ apps
  • Added standard ActionBar (you can chose to use ActionBarSherlock)
  • Used menuitem to open the Menu
  • Added ability to update ListView on main Activity
  • Added 2 ListViews to the Menu, similiar to Facebook and Google+ apps
  • Added a AutoCompleteTextView and a Button as well to show examples of implemenation
  • Added method to allow users to hit the 'back button' to hide the menu when it is open
  • Allows users to interact with background(main ListView) and the menu at the same time unlike the Facebook and Google+ apps!

ActionBar with Menu out

ActionBar with Menu out

ActionBar with Menu out and search selected

ActionBar with Menu out and search selected

5
votes

There is a great implementation of NavigationDrawer that follows the Google Material Design Guidelines (and compatible down to API 10) - The MaterialDrawer library (link to GitHub). As of time of writing, May 2017, it's actively supported.

It's available in Maven Central repo. Gradle dependency setup:

compile 'com.mikepenz:materialdrawer:5.9.1'

Maven dependency setup:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.mikepenz</groupId>
    <artifactId>materialdrawer</artifactId>
    <version>5.9.1</version>
</dependency>

enter image description hereenter image description here

2
votes

I know this is an old question but the most up to date answer is to use the Android Support Design library that will make your life easy.

2
votes

Personally I like the navigationDrawer in Google Drive official app. It just works and works great. I agree that the navigation drawer shouldn't move the action bar because is the key point to open and close the navigation drawer.

If you are still trying to get that behavior I recently create a project Called SherlockNavigationDrawer and as you may expect is the implementation of the Navigation Drawer with ActionBarSherlock and works for pre Honeycomb devices. Check it:

SherlockNavigationDrawer github