14 DAY TRIAL // Along with the Android 3.0 operating system version, Google introduced the Holo theme family that is present on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich as well. Developers who already came up with software for the new operating system have already encountered this feature, meant to ease the application building process for them.
Starting with the new Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, Google is making the Holo theme mandatory for all devices.
Thus, it should provide developers with the possibility to come up with apps that would run on a variety of devices without too much of an effort.
Variation in system themes made it difficult for developers to deliver apps compatible with a multitude of devices. Google says that it plans on eliminating that.
“In Android 4.0, Holo is different. We’ve made the inclusion of the unmodified Holo theme family a compatibility requirement for devices running Android 4.0 and forward. If the device has Android Market it will have the Holo themes as they were originally designed,” the company notes in a blog post.
“This standardization goes for all of the public Holo widget styles as well. The Widget.Holo styles will be stable from device to device, safe for use as parent styles for incremental customizations within your app.”
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich arrives on devices with a Holo theme family that includes the following: Theme.Holo, Theme.Holo.Light, and Theme.Holo.Light.DarkActionBar.
Developers can easily take advantage of these through requesting one from the manifest on their activity or application element. The application will be displayed with the unmodified theme on all compatible Android 4.0 devices.
However, mobile phone makers will not be restricted from using their own themes on their devices. Moreover, Google says that they can now do so more easily than before.
“In Android 4.0’s API (level 14) we’ve added a new public theme family to complement the Holo family introduced in Android 3.0: DeviceDefault. DeviceDefault themes are aliases for the device’s native look and feel,” the company explains.
The new DeviceDefault theme family and widget style family provides developers with the possibility to come up with applications targeted at the device’s native theme without losing customizations.