Develop Reference

Why my images and texts isn't being scaled on different screen sizes?

I'm trying to support different screen sizes as shown on guide: https://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html#DeclaringTabletLayouts.
I have 5 different drawable folders:
drawable(image size 40x48png)
drawable-mdpi(image size 80x96png)
drawable-hdpi(image size 120x144png)
drawable-xhdpi(image size 160x192png)
drawable-xxhdpi(image size 210x252png)
My project includes 5 different layout folders for each size:
300dp, 330dp, 480dp, 600dp, 720dp. Every folder has the same layout.xml file.
My layout code:
<TextView
android:id="#+id/textView2"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
android:gravity="center"
android:layout_margin="15dp"
android:text="Truuuuu"
android:textColor="#000000"
android:textSize="30sp"
app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
app:layout_constraintHorizontal_bias="0.39"
app:layout_constraintLeft_toLeftOf="parent"
app:layout_constraintRight_toRightOf="parent"/>
<RelativeLayout
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginLeft="15dp"
android:layout_marginRight="15dp"
android:layout_alignParentStart="true"
android:layout_alignTop="#+id/textView2"
android:layout_marginTop="60dp"
android:background="#ffffff"
android:orientation="horizontal"
android:id="#+id/relativeLayout">
<ImageView
android:id="#+id/off50"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginLeft="10dp"
android:layout_marginTop="10dp"
android:layout_marginBottom="10dp"
android:src="#drawable/off50" />
<TextView
android:id="#+id/akcija"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="pewpew!"
android:textSize="20sp"
android:layout_alignTop="#+id/off50"
android:layout_alignParentEnd="true"
android:layout_toEndOf="#+id/off50"
android:textColor="#000000"/>
<TextView
android:id="#+id/textView5"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignBottom="#+id/off50"
android:layout_alignParentEnd="true"
android:text="pewpew"
android:textColor="#000000"
android:textSize="20sp" />
</RelativeLayout>
<RelativeLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:layout_marginTop="15dp"
android:layout_alignStart="#+id/relativeLayout"
android:layout_below="#+id/relativeLayout">
<ImageView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:src="#drawable/idk"/>
</RelativeLayout>
My question is.. I do have different image folders and image files right? I made layout folders as well. My text isn't scaling either, on layout-sw720dp, for example, I can almost read the text.
What should I do to support text scaling? Why the image isn't being scaled on different screen sizes?

Ok, you're confused.
If you have the same layout file in each sw folder- don't. You only write a new layout file if you have different screen layouts for that size. Note that means entirely new or deleted elements, or changed positions. If you're just changing values, you use values files.
Remember that page you linked, while a good resource, mentions multiple things you can do. You're not supposed to do all of them, in fact some of them are contradictory. The right thing to do depends on how you want things to look.
For your image scaling- you're scaling based on screen density. That means all devices with the same density will use the same drawable, which will make it look the same physical size, but not scale relative tot he size of the device. That may or may not be what you want. If it isn't, you probably want to define a fixed size in dp of the image or make it match_parent and use a scaleType to scale it.
For text size- you're putting a fixed text size of 20sp everywhere. That will make it the same height on all devices. Generally making text bigger on different screen sizes isn't done much. If you want it, make the 20sp a dimension and set different values for it in dimen.xml files based on the size.
Helping you more than this really requires more info- what is it you're trying to achieve and what is it you're getting.

Android app: text getting cropped on smaller devices

We are developing an android app. The text displaying properly on 5" devices. But getting cropped on smaller devices (4", 3.5"). why is it happening? Any help welcome. Please see screenshots below. "Credit" "Debit" and "Net" displayed instead of "Credit Card" "Debit Card" and "Net Banking" in screenshot below.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:orientation="vertical"
android:background="#ffffff" >
<include android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
layout="#layout/sdk_header"
/>
<RelativeLayout
android:id="#+id/topLogoLayout"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="vertical"
android:layout_marginTop="0dp"
android:layout_marginRight="0dp"
android:layout_marginLeft="0dp"
android:layout_marginBottom="-11dp"
android:background="#e5e5e5"
android:paddingTop="10dp"
android:paddingBottom="20dp">
<TextView
android:id="#+id/youtxt"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
android:gravity="right"
android:layout_marginTop="5dp"
android:text="You"
android:textSize="40sp"
android:textColor="#727272"
android:layout_marginLeft="10dp" />
<RelativeLayout
android:id="#+id/arrowLayout"
android:layout_toRightOf="#+id/youtxt"
android:layout_toLeftOf="#+id/companyLogo"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginTop="5dp"
android:layout_centerHorizontal="true">
<TextView
android:id="#+id/txt_amount"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
android:text="Rs. 10"
android:textColor="#727272"
android:textSize="18sp" />
<ImageView
android:id="#+id/arrow"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="18dp"
android:src="#drawable/arrow"
android:layout_below="#+id/txt_amount" />
</RelativeLayout>
<ImageView
android:id="#+id/companyLogo"
android:layout_marginTop="5dp"
android:layout_marginRight="30dp"
android:layout_width="70dp"
android:layout_height="50dp"
android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
android:src="#drawable/wallet_logo"
android:scaleType="fitXY" />
</RelativeLayout>
<ImageView
android:id="#+id/orange_line"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
android:src="#drawable/orange_line"
/>
<com.viewpagerindicator.TabPageIndicator
android:layout_marginTop="0dp"
android:id="#+id/indicator" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_width="fill_parent" />
<android.support.v4.view.ViewPager android:id="#+id/pager" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" >
</android.support.v4.view.ViewPager>
</LinearLayout>

This is a complex topic on which a book could be written (and probably has). I'll focus on the only problem I can see: text size.
It seems that your fonts are too big on the small screen. This affects what appear to be tabs and buttons, although the EditText has the problem too (it just doesn't overflow).
The useful way of measuring screen size is the sw-dp (shortest width device independent pixel). The dp density is adjusted so that it is around 160dpi on all devices. For a 5" tablet that will be around a 3" width and it should be an sw480dp device. The 3"-3.5" screen has around a 2" width and should be an sw320dp device.
To make this work at the simplest level, you need to place some text size settings in your value-sw240dp folder that are about 3/4 of the text size for your default sw480dp device.
For example, this might appear in your dimen file in that folder.
<dimen name="view_field_text_size">14sp</dimen>
I can't give you a cookbook because I have no info about your other use of styles or dimensions. Perhaps in a layout you might have:
<EditText
<android:textSize="#dimen/view_field_text_size"
/>
It's better to put it in a style, but that's outside the scope here.

Different devices may have different pixel density, screen size, Orientation, Resolution and Density-independent pixel (dp).
Solution -
Define different layout files for different screen sizes.
Ensuring your layout can be adequately resized to fit the screen
Providing appropriate UI layout according to screen configuration
Ensuring the correct layout is applied to the correct screen
By default, Android resizes your application layout to fit the current device screen. In most cases, this works fine. In other cases, your UI might not look as good and might need adjustments for different screen sizes. For example, on a larger screen, you might want to adjust the position and size of some elements to take advantage of the additional screen space, or on a smaller screen, you might need to adjust sizes so that everything can fit on the screen.
The configuration qualifiers you can use to provide size-specific resources are small, normal, large, and xlarge. For example, layouts for an extra large screen should go in layout-xlarge/.
Beginning with Android 3.2 (API level 13), the above size groups are deprecated and you should instead use the swdp configuration qualifier to define the smallest available width required by your layout resources. For example, if your multi-pane tablet layout requires at least 600dp of screen width, you should place it in layout-sw600dp/. Using the new techniques for declaring layout resources is discussed further in the section about Declaring Tablet Layouts for Android 3.2.
Look - Multiple Screen Support and Support Screen training docs.

you just need to create different folders related to density or screen size like
Option 1.
values-large
values-small
values-normal
For more explanation check this link...
Multiple Screen Support
Option 2.
mTextView.setTextSize(16 * getResources().getDisplayMetrics().density);
this will give TextSize depending on density..

Making android support all screen sizes

I feel like I'm the only one lost here. Everyone seems to be fine with using DP to make apps work across multiple screen sizes. For me, whenever I load up another screen, the alignment will never be the scale properly.
However, if I use android:weight everything will scale fine across all devices. The problem I have with android weight for everything is that it doesn't always want to resize images well into layouts, not to mention the warnings I'll get for using nested weights.
One solution I see is creating a new screen size for each possible screen sizes out there. Is this what everyone else does? At first I thought we'd have to only create the x-large, small, etc layouts only to find that even these don't cope for various screen sizes (even the nexus 7 doesn't fall well into any of these categories).
Sample code
<RelativeLayout
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="0dp"
android:layout_weight="50"
android:background="#drawable/layout_border"
android:padding="10dp" >
<ImageView
android:id="#+id/imageView1"
android:layout_width="160dp"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
android:layout_centerVertical="true"
android:contentDescription="#string/app_name"
android:src="#drawable/yg" />
<ProgressBar
android:id="#+id/progressBar2"
style="#android:style/Widget.ProgressBar.Horizontal"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignBottom="#+id/imageView1"
android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
android:layout_toRightOf="#+id/imageView1"
android:paddingBottom="10dp"
android:paddingLeft="10dp"
android:paddingRight="10dp"
android:progress="50" />
<TextView
android:id="#+id/textView1"
style="#style/NormalFont"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_above="#+id/progressBar2"
android:layout_alignLeft="#+id/progressBar2"
android:layout_marginLeft="36dp"
android:text="#string/exercise_percent" />
<ImageButton
android:id="#+id/imageButton1"
android:layout_width="100dip"
android:layout_height="100dip"
android:layout_above="#+id/textView1"
android:layout_toRightOf="#+id/imageView1"
android:adjustViewBounds="true"
android:contentDescription="#string/app_name"
android:background="#drawable/start"
android:onClick="meditateTask" />
</RelativeLayout>
For example, here the imagebutton I have will be out of place on every new screen size.

You can create same layout for all screen sizes, small, normal, large and x large.
How can you do that: Make new XML layout file in layout folder, make it so it has same name as the layout you want to modify to fit for all screen sizes. Click next, and there will be some options shown, find Size and insert it. Then you will be able to chose which screen size you want.
And when launched, system will chose best screen size for device.
Repeat for all 4 screen sizes. Hope this helps

Using different layouts for different screen sizes Android

I've been working on a Memory Game for Android and I'm having a litle problem with tha layout.
I have 3 diferent layouts for every type of game (easy, medium and hard) where I have 4x4, 5x5 or 6x6 images on the screen that need to be matched.
I'm using an ImageAdapter to get the images and fill the GridView that I'm using for displaying the iamges on the screen.
Here's the XML file for the Easy game (4x4 images):
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:orientation="vertical">
<RelativeLayout
android:id="#+id/mainBar"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:gravity="center">
<TextView
android:id="#+id/player1"
android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="Player1 - "
/>
<TextView
android:id="#+id/player1Score"
android:layout_toRightOf="#+id/player1"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="00 "
/>
<TextView
android:id="#+id/player2Score"
android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="00"
/>
<TextView
android:id="#+id/player2"
android:layout_toLeftOf="#+id/player2Score"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="Player2 - "
/>
<Chronometer
android:id="#+id/time"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
android:text="02:00" />
</RelativeLayout>
<GridView
android:id="#+id/gridview"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
android:layout_below="#id/mainBar"
android:gravity="center_vertical|center_horizontal"
android:numColumns="4">
</GridView>
</RelativeLayout>
The only problem is that when I'm running the app on an emulator with a small screen size it the images look streched....(see IMG#1)..when I would really want to look something like this..(see IMG#2), on every screen no matter of the size!
I'm using different resources (different images for ldpi, mdpi, hdpi).

The problem you are having is that while you are supporting multiple screen densities you are not supporting multiple physical screen sizes. That is why on the smaller screen your images look bigger and begin to distort.
To solve this you can make a seperate layout for each phone size: small, normal, large and xlarge.
However as that is quite tedious I tend to lean towards using a linear layout and weights so that the layout xml scales on all phone sizes.
In this case you would want to make one vertical linear layout with 4 horizontal linear layouts inside.

Use this to find the correct physical screen size:
if ((getResources().getConfiguration().screenLayout &
Configuration.SCREENLAYOUT_SIZE_MASK) ==
Configuration.SCREENLAYOUT_SIZE_LARGE) {
// on a large screen device ...
}
Source: How to determine device screen size category (small, normal, large, xlarge) using code?

android density independence

I created a layout with the prebased (480x800) density. I have been using this since I started learning android (9 mths) and now it was time to test my app on other phones. I tested it on three phones with 480x800 resolution and was fine, until I tested it on one with 320x480 and 240x320. I have used px-s as width and height, paddingTop etc. everywhere.
I checked the app in the emulator (created different avd-s for different resolutions) and I cannot see the whole layout, as it is bigger than the screen (testing it only in eclipse). It has 4 images with "wrap_content" width and height settings.
So I checked the android documentation. I have not created other layouts or anything else, but replaced the px-s with dp-s. It is the same.
I created smaller buttons (see below) with 190x60px resolution and put them into the ldpi folder, but there was no big advance. Maybe because the textsizes of the textviews are the same and the 2 textviews takes 1/3 of the place of the display in case of the 240x320 resolution (while only 1/6 in case of the 480x800). (So the texts look huge in the small resolution compared to the large resolution)
Please tell me what should I do to make the layout look in this 320x480 resolution like in the 480x800.
Size of gradientbg: this is an .xml file for a shape, so no physical size.
Size of buttons (images): 380x150px hdpi (or 190x60px in ldpi folder)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:orientation="vertical"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:background="#drawable/gradientbg"
>
<TextView
android:id="#+id/TextView00"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:background="#E30000"
android:textColor="#FFFFFF"
android:gravity="center_horizontal|center_vertical"
android:textSize="26dp"
android:height="40dp"
android:textStyle="bold"
android:text="Main menu"
/>
<TextView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="App"
android:textSize="30dp"
android:textStyle="bold"
android:paddingTop="20dp"
android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
android:textColor="#FFB300"
/>
<Button android:id="#+id/btn1"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:background="#drawable/mainbutton_1"
android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
android:layout_marginTop="20dip"
/>
<Button android:id="#+id/btn2"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:background="#drawable/mainbutton_2"
android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
android:paddingTop="5dp"
/>
<Button android:id="#+id/btn3"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:background="#drawable/mainbutton_3"
android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
android:paddingTop="5dp"
/>
<Button android:id="#+id/btn4"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:background="#drawable/mainbutton_4"
android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
android:paddingTop="5dp"
/>
</LinearLayout>

When you normally define layouts in dp units, you ensure that the layout stays the same on devices in the same density bucket. But when you try it on a tablet (xlarge) or a small screen, it won't scale right. This tool is made to have your app work with the whole range of devices (small/normal/large/xlarge). It scales your layout xml-files from the baseline density you were originally designing for.
http://onemanmobile.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-to-scale-your-android-layouts-to.html