MyGOSSCON2010

Android User Interfaces:

Supporting Multiple Screens
Yap Wen Jiun
@wenjiun
Multimedia University Lecturer
CodeAndroid Malaysia Member

   
Growing Number of Android Devices

Low-end
Phones Tablets

 
High-end
 
Phones
Generalized Density and Size

ldpi:low mdpi: medium hdpi: high

   
 Some Statistics

http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/screens.html
   
 Testing on Emulators

http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/emulator.html
   
Screen Supports in Manifest

Within <manifest> element in AndroidManifest.xml

<supports-screens
android:smallScreens = "true"
android:normalScreens = "true"
android:largeScreens = "true"
android:anyDensity = "true" />

   
Using Resource Qualifiers

Size Aspect ratio Density

● small ● long ● ldpi
● normal ● notlong ● mdpi
● large ● hdpi
● nodpi
For example:
res/layout-small/main.xml
res/drawable-large-long-hdpi/android.png

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/providing-
resources.html
   
Using dp & sp to Define Size

Why using dp (density-independent pixel)?

● 100dp means 75px on QVGA at 120 density
● 100dp means 100px on HVGA at 160 density
● 100dp means 150px on WVGA at 240 density
Therefore, we will get rougly the same physical size.

Using sp (scale-independent pixel) for fonts

● sp is similar with dp but also scaled by the user's font
size preference

   
Draw 9-patch

   
References

Books
 Beginning Android 2
http://apress.com/book/view/9781430226291

Android Developers
 http://developer.android.com/

   
Thank you

Check out CodeAndroid Malaysia at

http://www.codeandroid.my/

● Small portions of this presentation are modifications based on work created

and shared by Google and used according to terms described in the Creative
Commons 3.0 Attribution License.