User Experience Enhancements in Tabris 1.3 for Android

Moritz Post
February 20, 2014 | 2 min Read

The upcoming Tabris 1.3 release will include visual improvements to the Tabris Android client. Most notable is an updated animation for the TabFolder appearance and an improved user experience when dealing with pages in the Tabris UI.

TabFolder gets smoother

The TabFolder always had a nice look to it but with the recent changes it also became more pleasant to use. Inspired by the tabs in the Google Play app, we have implemented a new and smoother animation for the tab bar. As you swipe through the tabs, they visually indicate the transitions you are making by keeping the tab indicator in sync.

As part of this change we also support the “background” property of the TabFolder to colorize the tab indicator.

TabrisUI Pages get more comfortable

Another important change in Tabris 1.3 for Android is the update of the TabrisUI navigation. Previously we used the navigation spinner to switch between top level pages. In the latest update we migrated to the official navigation drawer. The navigation drawer is a panel that transitions in from the left edge of the screen and displays the top level pages of the Tabris UI.

In summary, we implemented these best practices:

  • Edge swipe to open the drawer
  • Display the apps title when the drawer is open
  • Show the “up affordance” when drilling down into a Tabris UI page.

Wrap Up

These are just some of the user facing goodies in Tabris 1.3. Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks and don’t forget to follow our Tabris roadmap.

Try Tabris: download the 30-day trial or check out Tabris technology overview.

Moritz Post