Develop Reference

Supporting different screens for android

This is my first time working with multiple screens. I want to build my application for multiple screens i.e from sw320dp to sw720dp. I have created the following layout folders.
res/layout-sw320dp
res/layout-sw360dp
res/layout-sw480dp
res/layout-sw600dp
res/layout-sw720dp
I have copied all the xml files inside these folders. Is there anything else I need to add to make sure all the layouts support multiple screens. I have gone through the android documentation but I am not clear with the manifest.xml part. If anyone implemented multiple screen support in their application, so please do provide a description and implementation of the same.

Step 1 -You have to create different values folder for Different values for different screens.
Go to Your Project / app / src / main / res.
Right click on res and create different values folder in it.
Step - 2. Create folders named
values-large
values-small
values-sw320dp
values-sw320dp-hdpi
values-sw320dp-xhdpi
values-sw320dp-xxhdpi
values-sw480dp
values-sw600dp
values-sw720dp
Step - 3. Create dimensions.xml file in values folders.
Different values for different screen size.
values-ldpi 2.7" 240*320 ldpi
values-ldpi 3.3" 240*400 ldpi
values-ldpi 3.4" 240*432 ldpi
values-mdpi 3.2" 320*480 mdpi
values-hdpi 4.0" 480*800 hdpi
values-hdpi 3.7" 480*854 hdpi
values-xhdpi 4.7" 1280*720 xhdpi
values-xhdpi 4.65" 720*1280 xhdpi
values-sw480dp 5.1" 480*800 mdpi
values-sw480dp 5.4" 480*854 mdpi
values-sw600dp 7.0" tablet 1024*600 mdpi
values-sw720dp 10.1" tablet 1280*800 mdpi
when you attach dimension.xml file with your layout than you will get direct effect with your screen size.
This will help you to set dimensions for all type of screens.

There is a difference between supporting multiple screen sizes and creating different layout.xml files for each screen size.
In all the apps I've ever worked on, there were really only three different kinds of screens we cared about: small phones (years-old devices that our users weren't upgrading), "regular" phones (e.g. modern-day Samsung or LG phones etc), and tablets. Even considering those three kinds of screens, we often didn't need to create more than a single layout.xml file for a single screen.
If you have just one layout.xml file, it will display itself on any screen size. To "support" multiple screen sizes, you just need to make sure that your content looks good on short phones and tall phones, on wide phones and narrow phones, on phones and tablets, etc. This generally comes down to using dimensions like match_parent, or layout_weight to fill available space, etc.
It is only when you actually need to change what elements are on screen (as opposed to how big elements are) that you need to create extra layout.xml files. For instance, perhaps you know that a certain set of text + images just won't fit on smaller phones. Then you can create one res/layout/layout.xml that has only the text, and another res/layout-sw360dp/layout.xml that has the text + the image. Or maybe you have some content that you want to display side-by-side on a tablet, but you only want part of it on phones. Then you can make one res/layout/layout.xml with the normal content and one res/layout-sw600dp/layout.xml with the tablet-only content.
Regardless, when you decide that you do want to make multiple versions of a layout for different screen sizes, the only thing you have to do is create copies of your layout.xml in different layout-swXXXdp folders. Don't bother with layout-large unless your app supports really old API levels; the swXXXdp method is much more accurate and solves the same problem (but was only added in API 13).

Hey you dont need to do anything in manifest.
You have done the part with layouts.
Next you can do is to add support in drawable folder i.e. different density images for different sizes.
And if different screens require different values(dimentions etc) you need to create multiple file in values.

Android : Screen Size

I'm working on android application and got in trouble of multiple screen support. I developed the app for 1080x1920 and when i tested the app on my friends Micromax Unite 2 with resolution of 480x800, it was something else. So i made two folders in the layout as:
layout-1080x1920
layout-480x800
thinking that the 480x800 device will pick up the layout-480x800 folder. But no it used the layout-1080x1920. So what should i do? So that the device having resolution of 480x800 works on layout-480x800

I suggest naming the folders as such:
layout-sw600dp
Where sw600dp means Screen Width 600dp. This layout folder will be used by devices with screen widths of 600dp or more (typically all 7-10 inch tablets, or just very dense screen). And when you are targeting for the phone use just the layout folder without any specified criteria. All phones not matching the sw600dp will use the default layout resources. Possibly also consider using
layout-sw600dp-port
if you need to use specific layouts for portrait orientation, likewise you can do
layout-sw600dp-land
if you wanted to specified layouts for landscape.
The link cricket_007 provided is where I learned this information
Note that 1080x1920 equates to about 540 x 960 dp in dp measurement, which is why I suggested to use the particular 600dp for width

giving the folder names pixel according to android screen support dev page. Even if you know all possible resolutions for every device, the android system takes those *xml files/drawables etc specified by their DPI, not PX. Those dpi resolutions still can change on runtime, such as, when your activity uses a tool bar (which is not part of your dpi resolution). Name your folders layout-xlarge, layout-large, layout-normal, layout-small for *xml layouts. I suggest to put 4 different xml files with same name in each of them and try it again for different devices.

Different layout for 5 and 4 inch Android devices

I have an Android application with one layout file. I have different layout files for different densities, i.e., layout-hdpi, layout-mdpi, etc. I also have different dimens files in corresponding value directories (values-mdpi, values-hdpi, etc).
My problem is that I would like to use different layouts for 4 and 5 inch screen devices. I am testing on two physical a 4 inch and a 5 inch and both devices use the layout from the /res/layout folder and the dimens file from the /res/values-hdpi/ folder (in other words, they use the same resources).
Is there a way to make the 4 inch device use a different dimens.xml file - if not automatically, can this be done programmatically?

You can use something like layout-sw320dp or similar. This will differentiate layouts based on minimum display width.
Here is much more about it:
https://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html#NewQualifiers

Density is not related to size, they tell you how many pixels there are in on square inch of screen, not how may inches of space there are in the screen. you should use size related resources. for example layout-w500dp folder would be used for screens that have at least 500dp of width.this should help

How can I fix android tablet's width and height

I am making android application in tablet using fragments so that I arranged 8 buttons vertically in 10.1 tablet it is showing fine but in 7.1 tablet only 5 icons it is showing.
So How can I manage height and width properly in all tablets ... please help

Remember to write different xml layouts (with same name) and place to different folders: layout-large, layout-normal, layout-small and layout-xlarge. Same is with drawables (different size images) and values (different type padding and other values). These folders are for different phone/tablet types with various resolution and screen size. If you do it, then you can easily manage layout for small device and not touch big screen devices. Device is picking xml file automatically so it's good practice to place xml files in different folders for various phones.
More information you can find in http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html

You can use different layout for different screen sizes. You can also add different buttons and other drawable also. Please see the link
Supporting Multiple Screens

You can write different xml layouts using different folders:
For example:
res/layout
res/layout-sw600dp //used by 7''
res/layout-sw720dp //used by 10''
Also you can use the same layout with the same component but with different dimensions.
You can use #dimen/my_dimen notation, and then put your my_dimen in different folders like:
res/values/dimens.xml
res/values-sw600dp/dimens.xml
and so on..
Official doc: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html

Supporting multiple screens across different dpi and screen sizes

I have a two circles in a background image and I want to put two buttons in them. I am using relative layout. I have created several layout folders and images using guideline (layout, layout-large etc). But still the buttons are somewhat up or down in different actual devices. I am assuming this is because of Android default screen density bucket. Because if I provide only one layout for 320 to 479 dpi screen, It is possible that there could be a lot of devices in between. And my only layout for this range is surely going to be distorted? How do you design for supporting multiple devices? Thanks for you help in advance!

Add all the listed dimens.xml in vlaues folder for your project and manage them accordingly
values-sw320dp
values-sw360dp
values-sw480dp
values-sw600dp
values-sw720dp
This will definitely solve your problem of
supporting multiple devices.