Navigation Drawer with appcompat in android studio

Question

I am trying to do a project in android studio that uses Google's appcompat v7 and v4. I set up my new project in android studio which includes grid layout , actionbar , navigation drawer and fragments (all to be supported in froyo ). I included a sample navigation drawer template that I thought I could work around, but I find it totally cryptic with the documentation.

Is there any good tutorial out there that can help because all the ones I have seen seem to talk about something different. I downloaded the sample app Navigation drawer app from developer.android.com and tried to see if I could merge the two but to no avail.

Answer 1

I'm pretty much in the same boat as you, but probably about a month or so ahead. I have the better part of a working Nav Drawer style app that I'm putting finishing touches on.

You didn't say whether you are using Eclipse or Android Studio.. I use Android Studio, I find it to be excellent. My Nav Drawer app is all using support libraries. There is a little more fuss to be made from that, things like using getSupportActionBar and getSupportFragmentManager. Basically, you just have to be aware of some of the differences. Others such as the options menu are still causing me some problems.

I found this tutorial to be very useful. http://www.tutecentral.com/android-custom-navigation-drawer/

Don't try to merge projects just yet. It's not always so straightforward, there are dependencies etc that will need to be satisfied. Try to open that tutorial and just edit it in little chunks and test it, to see how it works. Pretty soon you can start from scratch and make it your own.

If you have more questions, google what you can, most things are fairly trivial.. but for the wider understanding stuff.. let em fly. I'll do my best to answer, but it will be the blind leading the blind here..