Android Navigation Drawer should be centralized vertically

Question

I have made my navigation drawer and it is working all fine , it is according to new design rules. but now I have a problem and after a couple of search I have found no note over it so far. So I end up with asking question here.

What I have done so far is some thing like

the picture shows you the demo , How ever I have made some thing like this its just the demo to give you people hint about what is header in the navigation drawer and where my menu items list lies

You can clearly see that there is a header in the navigation drawer and the menu item list beneath it .

Problem 1

now do to some reasons I have deleted the header , but my menu Items goes upwards to the top starting point. I know I can give margin up , but this is not the good way

Is there any good way I can just centralized them vertically ? I am wondering How to do it , Please Help me .

and Problem 2 is , I want to minimize the distance and margin between the menu items and menu icons in navigation drawer How to do this. I have not seen any of the discussion over it.

Please help me in solving both problems.

Answer 1

On screenshot you attached to your question, the navigation drawer doesn't look fine and according to the new desing rules :-/

Just have a look at the official guide: https://www.google.com/design/spec/patterns/navigation-drawer.html

Luckly for you nowdays we are provided by Google with Android Design Support Library that helps us with creating Navigation View (that replaces Navigation Drawer)

Here are links for you:

• official documentation, always a good read: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/design/widget/NavigationView.html
• nicely written blog post about Navigation View: http://antonioleiva.com/navigation-view/
• and last but not least, sample app using new Android Design Library: https://github.com/antoniolg/MaterializeYourApp

I know it's not the answer you were looking for, like "just change true to false in the line number 10" but stay assured that using official Navigation View is a way to go in modern Android world.

Answer 2

You can use the new NavigationView from the Android Design Support Library in making your navigation drawer. NavigationView make s creating material design-compliant navigation drawer. You can read about it at http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2015/05/android-design-support-library.html

Answer 3

1. Read these three articles
2. Take a look at this code
3. Use the design support library