Android drawable speech bubble

Question

I\'ve looked for days and can not find any good leads on how I can draw a bubble or where a draw 9 patch images is to use as a background. i am a terrible artist --Can anyo

Answer 1

Here is a simple speech bubble drawable I made. Hopefully, it's start in the right direction for someone. The view that this drawable is used in needs a height of at least 70-80dp and a similar minimum width to show properly.

Android Drawables leave a lot to be desired in terms of how usable they are for drawing anything even slightly complex.

This version looks like this:

UPDATE I've been working on XML speech bubbles again and was a little dissatisfied with my 2014 solution. In 2018, we have vector drawables which enable better solutions than the one above. Here are some more modern alternatives. They allow things like small messages and transparency.

speech_bubble_simple_user.xml

speech_bubble_simple_agent.xml

The two above look like this: (These versions don't quite work with transparency and I'm not sure why when the versions below seem to work fine.)

speech_bubble_nine_patch_user.xml

speech_bubble_nine_patch_agent.xml

The two above look like this:

dimens.xml (for both)

10dp
15dp
5dp
25dp