clients want exact replica app on iphone and android. the iphone design is the only one thought about, and it frequently has tabs on the lower part of the screen
in android, this can be replicated but the primary way of doing this was deprecated, for various reasons. (tabhost, tab groups, activity) android’s replacement methods include action bars and viewpagers and fragments with a varying degree of backwards compatibility but they don’t really put the resulting tabs at the bottom of the screen.
similarly, multiplatform web app tools like Sencha Touch can generate intuitive “bottom tabs” on both platforms. So for Android there are still a variety of ways to do bottom tabs, so it would be fiction to tell a client that they need to change their iphone design for android
how do developers and consultants approach this. any best practices?
I don’t quite know what you’re asking for. If it’s a programming solution, then someone who’s made bottom tabs before could answer. I’ve never done it, so I don’t know if there’s an easier way than the brute force do-it-yourself approach.
If it’s a consultation answer, then the best approach that’s worked for me is to convince the client that the “Android way” is to put tabs on the top. As such, people who use Android phones regularly come to expect a certain way things are done. Especially since ICS came out, soft buttons have been moved to the bottom of the screen. These can’t be shifted, moved, or removed and having tabs on the bottom could result in the user accidentally pressing either back, home, or process-list.