So I do not own a smart phone and don't have much money haha. I am a web designer and am getting more interested in app development. I am creating an app mock up in Photoshop. My question is. Since I don't have much experience with apps from a user perspective. Do you build the menu like a website or do you rely on the 3 dots on the top which open up the menu to select pages (at least this is how i think it works) And are these 3 dots always there? or do you actually design it into the theme of your app? What are the standards? Please correct me if I was wrong about how it works above and let me know the proper way to go about this Thanks so much guys!
Well, I believe it depends on which OS you're using, but as far as I know, the navigation is dependent on the developer.
Yeah, the programmer can pretty much do whatever they want. iOS has some standardised navigationbar features that you don't actually have to use, and they've redesigned for the upcoming iOS7 anyway, so just design something nice and make it work..! It's better to design it all rather than relying on OS level features - as you can't use those OS features in other platforms (ie. iPhone and Android versions can't look the same if you use OS features)
With Android you can use XML to make app layouts... it is different to building websites but if you know HTML you should be able to understand it.... you would still need to know Java though and the Android framework etc... or maybe you want some kind of WYSIWYG app builder?