Tag: Material Design

After months of testing by Google Top Contributors and Googlers, the new Material Design look of Google Calendar has gone live.  All accounts should be seeing the option to go to the new calendar look over the course of the next 48 hours.

The update brings a much needed refresh of the Google Calendar interface which, let’s be honest, was a bit “engineering looking” for the longest time.  The new look fits well into the overall Material Design look and feel that Google is after in their own apps for Android and other web-based apps.

The Android team has issued an update to the Material Design guidelines for developers.  The update is primarily aimed at the new features that have come to the platform in Android Oreo.  The guide adds a new Offline States section which covers how to customize apps to work for users when they do not have an Internet connection.  This is a big emphasis for Google, particularly in developing markets.

For those who don’t know, the Material Design guidelines is aimed at developers to assure that their app has the look and feel of what Google expects in Android.  Even if you are not a developer, the guide is great insight into the functions and looks of apps.

Material Design elements are making their way into Chrome OS at a snail’s pace. But, when you find something that can be setup in this new, sleek look, it’s kinda fun.  The latest, at least as far as I can tell, is in Chrome 56 which allows you to enable the look on your Extension page. I’ll preface this with two points:  First, I do not recall seeing this setting in Chrome OS 55 or earlier in the Stable channel.  It has been in the beta and canary channel.  Second, I’m assuming, but not sure, that this is in the Chrome browser as well.  I use a Chromebook so I can’t verify.  If you can verify this flag works in the Chrome browser, let me know and I will update this post with proper credit of course.   Thanks to John Borgen for confirming that this feature is indeed in the latest build of Chrome browser!

The new Material Design extensions page is not enabled by default but it can easily be set with a flag inside of Chrome.  That new flag is chrome://flags/#enable-md-extensions or you can just go chrome://flags and search Material Design and find it there (and a lot of other things that can get an MD make over.

If you use the shopping & auction app eBay on your phone, the latest update to the app is one you will want to get when it hits your updates.  The new version 5.0 build sports a whole host of changes including a complete makeover with Material Design.  This version of the app, visually, is much cleaner than the previous versions and is more fitting to the contemporary design of Android apps.  Along with this new design, navigation has also been improved and is more consistent with other apps.