notification bar - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Feb

Winamp Updated To Version 1.4.6 With Notification Player Controls

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

Popular (and well-established) music manager/player Winamp got an update today, bringing the app to version 1.4.6 and introducing (among other things) long-awaited notification player controls. The controls match the look and feel of the app they belong to, using a design language that (unfortunately) doesn't look like it's been revisited in a while. That said, they work like a charm, and add much-needed functionality.

Besides that, users will enjoy several bug fixes (primarily involving SHOUTcast and AAC playback), and some streamlined code on the Now Playing screen. In other words, behind-the-scenes stuff.

If you're already loving Winamp and want to get the notification player controls the app has so long been wanting, hit the widget to grab the update.

Mar

[Quick Tip] Swipe Sideways Across The Notification Bar To Control Screen Brightness In TouchWiz, CyanogenMod, And AOKP Based ROMs

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Tips & Tutorials

Yesterday, a great thread titled Share One Awesome Tip or Trick You Do With Your Android Phone, I'll Start... popped up on Reddit, and thinking I would be already aware of all the little tricks, I almost ignored it. By the end of the day, seeing over 100 comments piqued my curiosity, so I checked it out.

To my dismay, among all the great tips, I found one, courtesy of kennansoft, that somehow evaded me all along - and it was available in my own stock Epic 4G Touch Galaxy S II ROM of all things.

The tip itself is very simple - if you turn off auto-brightness, you can just place your finger on the notification area (as you can see in red below) and swipe it left and right to control brightness.

Feb

In-Depth Analysis: Android's Notification Bar Patent (And How Apple May Or May Not Infringe It)

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, Editorials, Legal, News

There has been a lot of interest of late in a patent filed (by Google) back in 2009 for what is obviously a rendition of Android's notification bar system. There are a number of pretty (well, as pretty as black and white gets) figures in the patent showing the notification bar we all know and love, and lots of language about notification systems and the like.

As many of the Android-faithful know, Apple recently implemented as part of iOS 5 the "Notification Center," and it looks an awful lot like Android's in some respects. This immediately drew criticism from the Android community, with many claiming that Apple had essentially "ripped off" Google's implementation, and has been a sore subject ever since.

Sep

[New App] HoneyBar Hides The Notification Bar On Rooted Honeycomb Tablets With A Single Tap

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News, Tablets

If you own a Honeycomb tablet, then you probably know that a true fullscreen option doesn't exist. When watching YouTube videos, viewing images in the gallery, or playing a games, the navigation bar is always present - which causes frustration for a lot of users. Enter HoneyBar, a simple way to temporarily hide the navbar on rooted tablets.

Upon install, HoneyBar will launch itself and constantly run in the middle of the navbar, which is usually blank space. I say 'usually' because with TouchWiz on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, this is where the mini app tray is.