Drawer design

Some of the most useful and frequently used material components are sliding drawers that slide in and out of the screen when needed. The most widely used of these is the NavigationView, which slides in from the left and forms a top level menu, providing access to the rest of the app's content. More often than not, it will contain a header that can display an image and/or pertinent text.

Prior to the design library, components like the NavigationView had to be constructed from other views, and although the library vastly simplifies this process and saves us from having to implement many material principles by hand, there are still several guidelines that we need to be aware of. The best way to appreciate these guidelines is by building a navigation sliding drawer from scratch. This will involve creating the layouts, applying material guidelines regarding component ratios, and connecting all this together with Java.

The layout

Setting up a working sliding drawer with a header...