Question: [Material design](http://www.google.com/design/spec/material-design/introduction.html#introduction-principles) makes a huge emphasis on the metaphor of "sheets of paper". To make these, shadows are essential. Since Material design is a philosophy and **not an API** (despite it being built into L), this should be done anywhere (Windows Forms, HTML/CSS, etc.). **How do I do this in Android API 14 to 20?**

Note that premade PNGs won't really be that practical for circular and other non-square shapes.

Answer: 
If you're not worried about backwards compatibility past Lollipop, you can set the elevation Attribute directly in the XML

```
    android:elevation="10dp"

```

Otherwise you have to set it in Java using the support.v4.ViewCompat library.

```
    ViewCompat.setElevation(myView, 10);

```

and add this to your build.gradle

```
    compile 'com.android.support:support-v4:21.+'

```

<http://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/v4/view/ViewCompat.html#setElevation(android.view.View,%20float)>
The floating action button (with shadow) can be emulated on old platforms with a simple java class.

I'm using Faiz Malkani's version here: <https://github.com/FaizMalkani/FloatingActionButton>

[Note, that to get it compatible back to Gingerbread you'll need to put some SDK version checks around the animations and transparency calls in his code.]