MLB.com At Bat gets Material Design makeover for 2015 season

With what seems like half the United States buried in a thick blanket of snow, it’s easy to forget that in the lands of grapefruits and oranges the 2015 MLB season is well underway. Spring Training began in earnest this week, and as players prepare for the grind of another year in the big leagues fans are being given the opportunity to spruce up their app game with a new update to MLB.com At Bat.

The big takeaway is a shift toward Google’s Material Design standards, bringing a truly native look to the app which provides fans with a way to stream live video and audio of MLB games direct from their smartphones and tablets (you’ll need to pony up for a subscription to enjoy the full benefits). The new UI stretches across team color-specific designs for all 30 designs plus an overhauled scoreboard view. Also included is support for Spanish language for the béisbol fans out there. You will still need to manually adjust your device’s language settings, however.

The new app is available now to download for free. While certain features can be enjoyed without a subscription, to get the full experience you will need to pay a .99 yearly fee or .99 monthly fee.

Download MLB.com At Bat from Google Play

 

Wunderlist gets a Material Design makeover and new features

Another app is getting some Material Design love. This time it’s the popular list-making and productivity app Wunderlist. The team has been hard at work the last few months building Wunderlist from the ground-up for Android Lollipop. Not only does it have a fresh coat of Material paint, but they’ve also added some really nice new features.

First and foremost is the new design. We’ve got colored status bars, floating buttons. meaningful animation, and a much more clean and refined look. It’s not a drastic re-design, but it’s just enough to make it feel at home in Android Lollipop.

Wunderlist has also added a few new handy features. First is the ability to put lists into folders. As you can see in the screenshots above I have two lists inside a “Shopping” folder. They’ve also made it much easier to add things from anywhere. You can create a new list or to-do with the floating (+) button, but also use the new widgets, or your voice with Google Now. All of these features are free for everyone.

If you’re looking for a great list-making app with sync across tons of devices and support for collaboration you can’t go wrong with Wunderlist. Download it for free from the Play Store today.

AllCast 2.0 brings a fresh Material design makeover [DOWNLOAD]

Even when you’re a developer as big as Koushik Dutta, getting your apps up to speed with Google’s Material design isn’t the easiest of tasks. Sometimes you need a little help and he got just that thanks to designer/fellow blogger Liam Spradlin who whipped up a fresh new Material look for AllCast in its new 2.0 update.

It’s not like AllCast was bad looking before, but this brings the app up to speed with Google’s Material guidelines. Small changes to the slide-out navigation menu can be found with slick new icons, along with the gallery view also receiving some love.

Without a doubt, AllCast is one of those must-have Android apps for Google’s Chromecast owners as it allows you to cast just about anything to the dongle. Whether it’s media stored on your device, or in the cloud, AllCast makes it all possible. The free version of the app caps video viewing at 5 minutes, but there’s also AllCast Premium which will run you .

AllCast (Playboard) | AllCast (Play Store)

Google Play Music gets fresh new Material Design makeover on the web

After watching as Google’s Material Design guidelines have crept its way into many of the search giant’s online services, today the Google Play Music website is getting a little bit of love. The UI now finally looks a little closer to the makeover the Android app received not too long ago with big high-res artist photos for backgrounds, circle photos on the artist page, and FAB.

The website also adds a handful of new keyboard shortcuts and even a handy popup player with easy access to your music queue. Apparently the new redesign was an attempt at making the web view feel more like an app. Google UX designer Bran Rea told The Verge:

“We’re moving towards making the web feel more like an app and less like a series of web pages strung together by links. The new header, the slick transition as you scroll, the collapsible nav, new animations, these all feel like things you expect in an app not on the web.

For the increased focus on big, immersive artwork, when you’re listening to music, you can get lost in it (in a good way). With the new album and playlist pages, you enter an immersive world focused on the music you’re enjoying.”

We know it’s not specifically Android related, but given that Google Play Music is such a popular music streaming service for Android faithful, we figured it was worth a shout out. If you don’t see the changes yet on your side of the world, don’t worry. It’s a gradual rollout and you should be seeing it in the coming days.

Dropbox for Android 3.0 brings a full Material Design makeover

Dropbox has announced a nice new upgrade to their Android app. It’s Dropbox 3.0, and the main highlight is that the app is now doused in a full coat of Material Design. We’re finally getting an excellent use of white space, drop shadows, and — oh yes — that glorious floating action button (which will allow you to easily add files and photos to whichever folder you’re in while you press it).

There weren’t many other functional changes made to the app, though you’ll notice a persistent search button throughout the app, as well as more consistent placement of sharing and file management controls throughout the app.

The upgrade should be headed to your phones and tablets shortly, so be sure to keep an eye out on Google Play throughout the course of the day. Oh, and check out the cool new user animation video they’ll be using straight ahead.

[via Dropbox]

Slack for Android gets Material Design makeover in version 2.0

Slack, a rich team communication platform, has updated their Android app in a big way. This is version 2.0, and it’s a complete rewrite from the ground up. The company felt the app needed to be done from scratch so that they were better-equipped to support Android’s unique features down the line.

The first thing you’ll notice when entering the new app is a complete Material Design overhaul. Dropshadows, white space and FABs, oh my! It’s certainly a lot better than the archaic mess that spawned in the Ice Cream Sandwich days.

There’s a long list of new additions and changes that should make the lot of you Slack users happy:

• Slick new ways of navigating around the app


• Simple tabbed navigation


• ‘jump to’ option for channels, DMs and private groups


• Team switcher dropdown menu


• Refined notifications


• Support for Message formatting


• Support for Android emoji


• An enhanced search function


• Local message storage

The upgrade is headed out through Google Play over the next couple of days so keep on the lookout for it. Haven’t tried Slack yet? You can give it a free download right here to find out if it’s right for your business, student group or whatever it is you may need it for.

[via Slack]