Android :: Layout Issues For Multiple Screen Sizes / API Versions
Jan 19, 2010
I am currently trying to make my app compliant with all screen sizes / api levels. I have this mostly working, however there is 1 issue i cannot resolve: Layouts in the "layout-hdpi" folder are used by and any phone on 1.5 (API level 3). - Which i dont want, i want API level 3 phones to use the "layout" folder. So to resolve this I added "-v4" onto the folder also, this works, the folder is no longer used by 1.5 phones. However, now the folder is also not used on API Level 6 phones, for example the droid. The droid only picks up the folder if i name the folder: "layout-hdpi-v6". (Also if i put "-v3" on a folder, the layout folder is not used by API level 4 phones) My understanding is that the -v<api level> qualifer allows you to exclude phones on an API level that is too low, so -v4 should mean that the folder will be used by all phones on API level 4 and above. I am finding a folder is only used for that specific API level. Has anybody else ran into this same issue? And does anybody know of any possible solutions?
View 3 Replies
Aug 12, 2010
With the many devices available, each with different screen density and resolution, I am wondering - how many versions of an image should I make for the different device screen sizes? Is it 3? small, medium, large or just 1.
View 4 Replies
View Related
Apr 22, 2010
I've been reviewing the Supporting Multiple Screens documentation on the Android and I just need some additional clarification...
It's my understanding that designing three unique interfaces (ldpi, mdpi, and hdpi) would be the best way to go about supporting all the potential android screens with minimal scaling/distortion.
Yes, I know there are similar questions posted, however... If I create an image for the benchmark mdpi (let's say my image is 300x210, just for example) how to I determine what size I will need to recreate that image at ldpi & hdpi? This post as well as a google search leads me to believe that ldpi is just 75% of the mdpi image, and the hdpi is 150% of the mdpi image. Is this accurate?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Dec 16, 2009
I have created layout-large and testing against android 2.0.1 WVGA. however, its picking layout-normal. Can anybody suggest me what I am doing wrong. Even though, I have 3 layouts ( layout-normal, layout-large, layout- small), Its always picking layout-normal. why its so.
I added properties to manifest file
CODE:.............
View 2 Replies
View Related
Apr 13, 2010
I've read the Android documentation:
http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html
but still have some questions. I'm trying to design a music application which basically has images of the instrument (ImageButton) that play a sound when clicked. However, I'm confused about how to have the ImageButtons scale to fit all the different screen sizes and how to position them.
Which layout is best used for needing to position ImageButtons in specific locations on the screen? (i.e. cymbals on a drum set) FrameLayout, RelativeLayout? If I only really care about medium and large screens, do I need to create different resources (images) for both as well as a different XML layout to position them? I'm trying to find the simplest way to do this without having to create a separate layout XML file for positioning/size and separate image resources for each screen.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Mar 1, 2010
i am developing a game and i need to use android1.5 only.
i wrote sample application using 1.6 and kept drawable-hdpi,-ldpi ... and application is working fine in emulator of 1.6. i made apk and opened an emulator (android 1.5) from command prompt application is also working fine.
in 1.6 if i change emulator resolutions the application UI is resizing. but in 1.5 emulators not.
is that mean, the application developed in android 1.6 runs in 1.5 emulator but multi screen support is not achieved?
..."how to achieve multiple screen sizes in android 1.5". multiple screen support is available from 1.6.
View 6 Replies
View Related
Apr 14, 2010
I'm confused regarding the densities. I see that with medium density, the screen resolution could be either 320x480, 480x800, or 480x854. So if I have an image thats 300px wide in the mdpi folder, how is it going to look the same size on all 3 different screen sizes (mainly 320x480 vs the other 2)? And by look the same size, I mean scale to be bigger or smaller depending upon the screen size.
View 5 Replies
View Related
Jul 31, 2010
What I'm trying to do is have a clock widget of different sizes (i.e. 2x2, 3x3, 4x4 etc) in one apk and a configuration activity to be able to select which size to add. From what I've learned from documentation:
Widget size is specified in <appwidget-provider> tag in respective xml file
Also in that file I set up the configuration activity for that provider
So it seems that size is a property of AppWidgetProvider and I'll need to somehow create another provider from the code in configuration Activity of the first one. I have read this and this. First one explains how to put multiple wigets in one apk, but it's not clear how to select between them in runtime. Second one is about changing layouts, but not size.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Nov 11, 2010
I am trying to develop an app for which I want multiple screen support. I have read the Android article on Best practices for Multiple Screen Support. As per the article we have to follow 3 important things:
1. Mention support for different screen sizes (large, medium and small) and any density in AndroidManifest.xml.
2. Place images of 3 dpi's (120, 160, 240) in 3 folders res/ldpi, res/ mdpi and res/hdpi.
3. In layout's the dimension should be mentioned in "dip" units. Then Android will take care of the scaling on its own.
I have implemented all these points in my project. The images are picked up correctly from the appropriate folders. But the arrangements of the controls in not same. e.g. I ran the app on three emulators 1. Resolution 240*320 dpi 120. 2. Resolution 240*320 dpi 160. 3. Resolution 240*320 dpi 240. (All the emulator have same resolution but different density). The problem is the position of the controls is not same on all the three emulator. As per my understanding if the android:layout_marginLeft and android:layout_marginTop are mentioned in "dip" then this problem should not occur. As the density of the emulator increases the controls get placed more towards the right. Is it necessary that I provide layouts for all combinations of dimensions and density i.e. in layout-small, layout-large, layout- medium, layout-long,layout-notlong?
View 2 Replies
View Related
Dec 7, 2009
I have noticed that when I install some widgets I can later choose from different widget sizes while adding widget. How can I implement that feature in my widget?
View 2 Replies
View Related
Aug 9, 2010
I'm looking at creating an AppWidget and want to have the user select which size they want before adding it. Thus, the user can choose 1x1, 2x2, etc. The Calendar widget in Android 2.2 (and possibly earlier, but not in 1.6) does this. How is this done?
View 11 Replies
View Related
Oct 3, 2009
How can I publish two versions of my app without changing the package name, so that users may upgrade to either version, one for Anroid 1.5 and one for Android 1.6 ? I want to offer new features requiring Android 1.6 as soon as possible, but not all users will have upgraded to Android 1.6.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Nov 17, 2009
We are upgrading our application to add 2.0 support. I have read http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/api-levels.html and the older blog post http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2009/04/backward-compatibility.... I want to avoid using reflection if possible. I have found that if I set my minSdkVersion="3" in the application manifest but in my build path in eclipse point to the Adroid 2.0 jar file I can compile with direct calls to 2.0 code (with the relevant code to ensure they are not invoked on <2.0 devices). My question is will people with pre 2.0 devices be able to see the application in the market place in this case? What are other people using for multi-targeting different API levels with the same package.
View 7 Replies
View Related
Feb 19, 2009
I am planning to have two versions of the same app available in the market - let's say "App-Lite" and "App-Advanced". They both almost the same core functionality, but App-Advanced has a bit more specific features, than the App-Lite has. Now I am thinking what would be the strategy of deploying those two apps in the market. The simple way is to provide different name space in AndroidManifest.xml for both apps, so "App-Lite" and "App-Advanced" would show up as two completely different applications and could be installed parallel on the same device. But I'm also thinking about another way of installing the App-Advanced version - like an upgrade to the App-Lite which might be already installed. To do this, I can just set the same name space for both app in AndroidManifest.xml, so after installing one app would replace the other one - I can do this from adb command line, but I'm not sure how android market would behave in this case. Will it show them as two different apps, will it show them as two different versions of the same app with the ability to upgrade from one version to another, or it just will not allow to publish two apps with the same name space? Is this scenario doable with Android Market?
View 3 Replies
View Related
Aug 3, 2009
Whats the best way to deploy several customized versions of a Android application? Currently I have a script to exchange the resource folder for getting a customized version of my app. It works great, but all custom versions still have the same package name in the AndroidManifest.xml. Therefore it is not possible to install two customized versions of the app at the same time.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Jan 8, 2010
I need to be able to easily create different "flavors" on an app, each with a unique package name so that they can coexist on the same device. Is there a simple way this can be done, which doesn't require manually updating all the imports and other references to the package name each time I change it?
View 4 Replies
View Related
Feb 18, 2009
We're thinking about building light and paid versions of our app for the Market. But I am not clear what we need to do, or how to do it. (1) Do we definitely need the two versions to have different package names for the two builds ?It seems logical to do it that way, but I have not found a clear answer from Google to that question. Though I have found several people asking the same question. 2) Is there any support in Eclipse for building two similar apps with different package names from the same java and xml files ?In most of the IDEs I've used, it is a doddle to define multiple build targets for one project, but none of those mechanisms seem to be present here. And, the package name is embedded in every java file, as well as in many places in the manifest, leaving me without a tidy way to build to alternate package names.Is there a tidy way to build multiple version ? Or are we really going to end up copying the whole codebase and search-and-replacing the package name.
View 6 Replies
View Related
Sep 9, 2010
I would like to know if its possible to prevent my application from looking different every time I run it on a different android phone. For example, on stock 2.2, my seek bar (with default values and theme) has an orange color for the selected portion, whereas on a Samsung Galaxy S (with 2.1), it is green. Also the tab background is grey in stock 2.2, but blue in Galaxy S. On a similar note, my rating bar changes size too. I do not implement multiple screen resolutions and all my drawables are located in the "drawables" folder under "res". I donot specify a minimum sdk requirement.
View 5 Replies
View Related
Nov 5, 2009
This is for an Android application but I'm broadening the question to Java as I don't know how this is usually implemented. Assuming you have a project that targets a specific SDK version. A new release of the SDK is backward incompatible and requires changing three lines in one class. How is this managed in Java without duplicating any code(or by duplicating the least amount)?
I don't want to create two projects for only 3 lines that are different. What I'm trying to achieve in the end is a single executable that'll work for both versions. In C/C++, you'd have a #define based on the version. How do I achieve the same thing in Java?
View 5 Replies
View Related
Jul 30, 2010
I have an app on Android Market right now with a minSdkVersion corresponding to Android 1.6. I'd like to make an update that is only visible to users of Android 2.2 and higher (there is a good reason for this, which I will explain below). So I have two questions:
- First, if I publish an update with a higher minSdkVersion than the one it replaces, will existing users still be able to see and download the old version if their device is not >= that minSdkVersion? - Secondly, if so, would it be possible to publish updates to that older version branch? Or would it become a fossil relic, but at least always there for downlevel users? Now for the background. My apps use a large amount of resource files-- about 15MB for the Lite version, and about 55 for the Full version. Prior to Android 2.2, it was not possible to install an app on the SD card, so my solution to this was to have the app contain the bare essentials, and simply download the other resources from my web servers at first-run. However, this means that I must maintain external infrastructure, and it's also a bad experience for users who must download the app, then start another download sequence (I already have had several complaints about this in my user comments). What I would like to do is to keep the app as it is for users with Android OS < 2.2. I'd like to publish an update that is only visible to users with Android OS >= 2.2 which packages everything into the app and allows it to be stored on the SD card. And I'd like to be able to perform maintenance on both versions as needed. Why can't I just do the update as described above to a single branch of the app? Because it would mean that users with Android OS < 2.2 would have to download a massive application to their internal memory, which could be a deal-breaker for devices with only 128MB or 256MB, which is shared with the OS. Since I already have paying customers, I don't think I can ethically create an update that would potentially consume most of a user's internal memory, when the version they purchased was only a couple MB.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Jan 11, 2010
I need my app to run on all Android versions, but the Contacts API changed in 2.0. In SDK 1.6 and earlier I use android.provider.Contacts to query the contacts DB, but this does not work in 2.0 Instead, for 2.0 I use android.provider.ContactsContract. This presents a problem: when I have code for ContactsContract, my app will not build for 1.6 and earlier. Do I need to have two separate versions of my app (one for <= 1.6 and one for 2.0 and later) or is there a way to avoid doing this?
View 1 Replies
View Related
May 15, 2012
I'm contemplating the idea of developing an application for the android. I have several years of experience developing web applications with Java and so figured it shouldn't be too hard to pickup a book and learn how to do it for the android platform. So far so good; that's why I love Java.
My question is in regards to how does the android development community go about testing their applications of the various android version and phones? I think I'm more concerned about the android version rather than the phones. I'm planning on getting the Sprint Evo 4G LTE coming out on Friday, so I'm obviously going to be able to develop and test for Android 4 and HTC Sense 4 (though I don't think that is as important right? Development is usually against the OS and not the UI manager, right?). But how would I go about testing against Gingerbread, Froyo, etc.? Do you guys keep a previous old phone (like my old HTC Evo 4G) and flash diferent roms in order to test the app against previous versions of android? Are there other solutions? If it's using an old phone, does this work off-network/service? I guess you could just dump the apk on the sd card and install as third party app and test it out. As long as the app doing require phone services or mobile data network (internet) you'd be fine if you have wifi access right?
View 4 Replies
View Related
Aug 20, 2010
I would like to make a single Android app for multiple Android versions (possibly every one of them)
My problem is that I want to check what is the version of Android the app is currently running on, and dynamically load a class which is version dependent. This part should be ok.
I just wonder how I can achieve that without compilation errors in my Eclipse project. I mean, the project is configured for a particular target (1.5, 2.1 ...), so if a class in my project is not compatible wich the selected target, it will result in errors.
Is there a way to export this classes even if they are not fit for the platform (I thought about a separated lib, but then again : how to compile theses classes into a lib without compilation pbs?) ? This should be ok since they won't be loaded until I ask them to after having checked Android version.
View 2 Replies
View Related
May 4, 2010
Are there any viable approaches for creating multiple .APKs out of a single codebase? The apps may share the same code, but they could have different manifest files, different resources, or different external libraries (for example in an app with both free and paid versions, the free version could have a library for display ads). Ideally, this would be a single Eclipse project, with a way to specify which app to build/debug, and possibly a command line way to batch build everything.
View 16 Replies
View Related
Nov 13, 2009
I've got a quick question about screen size support. Currently, I've got an application that is rockin' along just fine on 1.5 and 1.6. Today the client called and says they want to run on Droid. While I've downloaded the 2.0 SDK, I'm a little wary of compiling against it. Will it break 1.5 and 1.6 compatilbility? How will the "medium" phones (G1, MyTouch) know to use those layouts?
View 3 Replies
View Related
Oct 15, 2010
I want to develop an application for a tablet of 480*800 screen pixels. I had developed an application for normal mobiles, but now this screen size is large than normal size. what precaution should I take while developing the application? Because device is not available right now so I must have to work on the project using emulator.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Aug 25, 2009
G1, Dream, Magic, Hero, Galaxy and more to come... Does anybody have a rundown of their screen sizes (and of some of the devices to come out)?
View 2 Replies
View Related
Nov 29, 2009
Hello, I would like to ask what settings are necessary for my application to be available on all screen sizes: Is it enough to compile it using SDK 1.6 (but target is set to 1.5 and API level to 3) or maybe I have to set target to 1.6 and API level to 4?
View 4 Replies
View Related
Apr 27, 2010
supporting multiple screens (sizes and resolutions). I´ve searched not only this forum but many different websites and the android documentation but I´m probably doing a small mistake so things are not working properly.
Well, my main layout was designed with a HVGA screen, and it works great. When I try the same app on a WVGA, FWVGA, WQVGA or FWQVGA, I always get an unused space in the end of the layout because the screen ´s "heightnes" is proportionally bigger than HVGA´s.
So I consulted the documentation and decided to give a try on resource qualifiers, so I then created a nonsense UI and placed it on layout- large, created a new AVD using the WVGA skin and launched the app. Well, all I got was my old and not well stretched layout. The same happened to a FWVGA AVD.
This is the first problem. The second is: medium high density medium size screens and medium density large screens have the same resolution: how can I create a layout that is loaded for both, but not for (for example) medium size medium density or small size medium density screens?
View 10 Replies
View Related
Dec 16, 2009
I'm developing one android application which needs to support Android OS 1.5, 1.6, and 2.0. I've three different .apk files for all three SDK. How can I upload three different .apk files on Android Market Place for single application? I would like to have all 3 versions available under one application name. is this possible? So, users with any SDK can use my application.
View 5 Replies
View Related
