I'm starting with android, and the app I'm developing is gonna need custom widgets look (glossy buttons, animated backgrounds etc.),
I've googled for any external libraries to achieve this and did not find anything.
let me guess, the only way to this is by painly extending base view classes and overriding onDraw etc. ?
You need to explore View Styles. You can customize almost any view element. You might not need any external library that extends and designs custom buttons.
More ref:
- http://blog.androgames.net/40/custom-button-style-and-theme/
- http://www.androidworks.com/changing-the-android-edittext-ui-widget
I like this library quite a lot: https://github.com/cyrilmottier/GreenDroid
It includes:
- Action bar
- Quick action
- AsyncImageView
and a lot of other things
It's easy to use and nice for quick developments.