I am going to develop an android app, but unlike my previous apps, this time I have to tell someone what graphics and assets I require even before starting the development. The designer has designed all the screens, and now looking at those screens I have to tell him what resources(in what sizes and densities), fonts, icons etc I require.
Does there exist a checklist, which cleanly lists all the required graphics(for different sizes and densities), and assets including those graphics which are required only at the time of app publishing.
I work in a company where I have to tell designers as well. So despite any hard mapped check list, it always helps if you make the designer understand a bit on how the Android works.
Don't forget that color codes, XML drawables (borders, gradients) and 9-patch are way more efficient than static PNGs.
Then I make him do everything just for the Galaxy Nexus on XHDPI and only after the whole development is complete that I ask for the other resized assets (because assets tend to change throughout the project and then I don't have to be updating all of them).
Despite what is on the mock-ups is just a few more assets:
launcher icon,
high-res launcher (512 x 512)
promotional graphs (180w x 120h)
feature graphic (1024 x 500)
the other you'll use registering on Google Play is the screen shots which you can get from the real app, after it's complete.
The previous answers totally answers this question but I just wanted to add something to Budius. I know I am not suppose to reply to other answers but as a Designer I think I should point something out.
Budius said "make him do everything just for the Galaxy Nexus on XHDPI". I would suggest having him make everything on MDPI as MDPI is the current baseline. Reasoning behind this is that in no matter what program used, ex: Photoshop, it is much more cleaner to scale up than to scale down. Scaling down sometimes results in weird artefacts and require adjustments where as scaling up usually results in a perfect scale.
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I am about to publish my first app and I am extremely confused about making it look nice on different screens.
At first I thought mdpi/hdpi/etc. values (dimensions) folders would suffice when I saw that the screen was showing the exact same things on S4 Mini & S6 Edge, hdpi & xxxdpi respectively.
Well, how is this even possible when I haven't specified other than the main dimensions.xml file?
From what I understand from playing with the layout editor on different devices is that screen size matters more (?).
So far I have created a mdpi/hdpi/xhdpi/xxhdpi folder but it seems that that's far from enough.
What other folders should I make? Do I need many layout folders too?
I would use this scalable size unit library. It's really easy to use and it will automatically scale your widgets for various screen sizes.
Here's the link if you are interested: https://github.com/intuit/sdp
I developed and application and uploaded all the images in the respective drawable folders (different pixels for different desnities).
Now I am confused when it comes to layout. If I used the layout editor with 4.1 inc (thats considered Med screen I guess?) everything looks great.
Now when I use the editor with 10.1 inch which is the tablet, then I see icons very small and the text is small. I have not run the emulator yet.
So I am wondering:
1- why would the text be small although I didn't specify text size? Shouldnt scalle appropriately? or should I give it a specific size for bigger layouts?
2- Why the icons are small given that I provided the different drawables? I thought it would scale up accordingly.
Please don't give me the supporting multiple screens link in android as an answer, as I already went through it and still no luck with above. I need your personal advice as I think I am missing something here
Thank you so much in advance
Android support for different screens is a little tricky. That's because you can have large, small, medium and xlarge screens, plus high, medium and low density ones. There are a dozen possibilities (xlarge low density, small high density) and not a single resolution is defined. So you must know the principles which the API is designed upon and must define your layout thinking about the role the widget has inside your UI. You also must bear in mind that your layout won't be pixel perfect on 100% of devices, so your aim should be being usable on all possible devices.
In your specific case it seems that either you don't manage to specify the correct resources, or the system doesn't pick up the right ones for you, but I must remark that it doesn't make sense on Android to talk about big, small and scale: you should design your layout with a (good) webdeveloper mindset, who daily deals with tons of different displays, resolutions, physical sizes and even devices.
I also suggest not using the graphical builder if you are new to Android, because you really need to know how Android lays out components, otherwise you will come back to SO very often :)
If you do not specify the text size in your layout file Android will take the default value, which is most likely in DIP (density independent pixel) therefore it will be the same physical size on any devices. That should explain why the text looks so small on your 10 inch tablet.
What I would do in this case is have 3 layouts for each activities and specify the text size for larger devices (given you already like the look on phones) and put them in this folder scheme :
res/layout/layout.xml // phones
res/layout-sw600dp/layout.xml // 7” tablets
res/layout-sw720dp/layout.xml // 10” tablets
Information above was taken in this article. I have this applied in my current personal project and so far it works like a charm.
Secondly, as far as icons go, I'm no drawable expert but if you provided the same file in each folder (like I think you did from what I understand in your question), it will not make it scale. You'll have to create 4 difference icons, one for each possible pixel density.
Information about icon sizes can be found on this page.
Hope this is of some help to you.
My experience with the Android device zoo drew me to the sad conclusion that the built-in screen size/layout facility is useless. Cases in point, straight from support:
a 10 inch tablet with Android 2.2. Screen size xlarge is not supported by Android 2.2
Kindle Fire, which is 7 inch and claims it's xlarge.
I ended up putting all three layouts (med/large/xlarge) into layout, loading one based on run-time density and resolution, and providing an option for user to force a specific layout.
Just sayin'.
I have reviewed the content of some of the currently best Android apps (not to mention that I often check the content of apps I personally or professionally use) and I see that they DO NOT support small screens. I do not mean they they literary do not support them by excluding them in the Manifest file. It's just that the directory LDPI is almost empty (except launcher icon and maybe a few other icons) and that layout-small directory does not even exist.
So the question is, should we bother to support the small screens when nowadays Android devices start from MDPI/NORMAL to up?
The whole point of Android is to be compatible with different hardware characteristics so I would tend to say "yes" it's important to consider low res targets.
Although, doing some research it's true that there are less and less ldpi devices. This article shows interesting results:
UPDATE:
watch that article on Android developer website for more up to date figures:
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/screens.html
That, of course, depends on how compatible you want your application to be. If you want it to support older, smaller screens, then yes; otherwise, no. This sounds more like a business decision than a technical one.
I think you may be confusing density and screen size, as you're using the terms interchangeably.
Just because you have a small screen size, does not mean it has to be low-density. There are screens that register themselves as "small" to android, that are considered HDPI, based off their resolution.
Also, if you have MDPI images, it'll work just fine on devices reporting as "small", as most of that is based off the design of your layout and how well it flows across multiple screen sizes.
As you can see on the Android screen grid, small <> ldpi. http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html#testing
In closing, just because you aren't including LDPI images doesn't mean you don't support small screens.
This question, to me, comes down to time vs. reward. According to http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html, a little over 3% of the market base are still running pre-2.1 phones. If Ice Cream Sandwich does what its supposed to do, hopefully these conversations will go the way of the dodo.
At this point very few people have those kinds of devices, and therefor most don't support it. However, those who do support it have a much greater chance of being used by that small percent, simply because no one else is selling to them.
If it makes sense for you app, and you have the time and energy to put into making it compatible, why not? On the other hand you shouldn't try to shoehorn something in and cause it to become a worse product for it.
Also they have released the ability to have multiple APKs based on different requirements, so we can develop apps targeted to earlier phones, without interfering, or adding code and resources, to our higher targeted apps.
I was looking at the source code of the open source Google IO App for android, and I relazied that they only have drawables in the "drawables-hdpi" (with only 2 exception out of 50 or so).
Reading the android guides and articles, I came to think that we need to support different screen sizes and resolution, but Google's IO app, which is supposed to reflect good GUI design patterns only has drawables for hdpi.
What is even more confusing to me is that it looks fine on my small low-dpi screen (SE Xperia X10 Mini).
Can someone please clarify my confusion.
This is a new answer because it cant be postet as comment due to its length... Android will take care of scaling. So it is not necessary to provide different screens if you just simple scale the images yourself. See this comment from Dianne Hackborn (Android framework engineer):
Sure, if you are actually generating different bitmaps for different densities, then you must be doing this because you want/need to carefully control their graphics. However my original point stands: if what you are doing is drawing your icons at one high resolution and then scaling those down automatically to generate lower dpi versions, it is well worth considering just letting the platform do the scaling for you.
Also keep in mind that for the new tvdpi density that is used on things like the Nexus 7, we strongly discourage developers generating their own bitmaps for it. Let the system take care of scaling those down (from the hdpi or higher density version you supply). This is what is happening for very nearly every single graphic you see on the stock software that comes with the Nexus 7. If it is good enough for what is shipping on the N7, it is probably good enough for you.
Source: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/android-developers/-CMgbDIo0qA%5B1-25%5D
Android does a lot of work on its own in order to get stuff to look well on almost all screens.
Taken from: Supporting multiple screens
At run time, the platform provides
three types of support to your
application, to ensure the best
possible display on the current device
screen:
1) Pre-scaling of resources (such as
image assets)
2) Auto-scaling of pixel dimensions
and coordinates
3) Compatibility-mode display on
larger screen-sizes
Specifically, since that app only has hdpi images, it will downsize them to look well on a mdpi and ldpi screen.
The Google IO App was for the Google IO conference attendees. If you remember, all attendees received a HTC EVO at the conference that was pre-loaded with this app (in lieu of the traditional binder with maps and schedules). So since the EVO is a hdpi capable device, I'm guessing they didn't need to include icons that weren't hdpi.
As for why it looks good, blindstuff has that covered. They auto scale the icons down for smaller devices.
I have an Android app that I would like to display high quality images with. However there are many different screen sizes and ratios. I know there are filters to show apps in Market only for devices with small/medium/large screens.
If I put images of both sizes in 1 app it will double the size of the app, right?
Is it a good practice to make multiple versions for different screen sizes?
I would like to make 1 app in 3 versions for such devices:
medium screen mdpi
medium screen hdpi + large screen mdpi
large (tablets)
If it's possible to do it how can I specify them in manifests? Or is it somewhere in market?
Android has a built-in mechanism for having resources designed for different screen sizes and pixel densities. It's called resource directory qualifiers, and you can read all about it here.
For example, for small screen sizes, you could create a specific layout file and place it in the res/layout-small directory. For a larger screen, you could create a layout file with the same name and place it in the res/layout-large (or res/layout-xlarge) directory.
For pixel density, you could create a small version of your image resources and place them in the res/drawable-ldpi directory (lower pixel densities). And for higher pixel densities, you could create alternate versions and place them in the res/drawable-hdpi directory.
I'd encourage you to read the page on Supporting Multiple Screens, and let Android help you out with its built-in mechanisms. Creating three separate copies of your app is harder for you to maintain, and it confuses potential users (most of whom probably neither know nor care about "pixel densities"). What's to stop them from downloading the wrong version of your app, and getting a lousy experience because of it?
No one seems to be addressing the file size issue you're really asking about, so I'll try.
You should package your high quality images as a set of separate downloads, one for each type of device you plan to support. This makes your base app small, and ensures the end user's disk space is only filled by images it needs.
I've not done this myself, but hopefully the idea will send you on the right search path. I imagine you design the separate download as either resources on your own server, or another set of apps in the market (i.e. "MyApp Image Pack HDPI", "... MDPI", etc.).
As Donut mentions above android has excellent documentation for this here, here, here and here.
Note that all Manifest file changes and how to create one binary that will support different screen sizes, different densities AND different SDK's are at android website. But it requires careful planning and testing to do so.
The best way is to have ALL device configurations (listed here, including the Samsung Galaxy Tab simulater (large screen, hdpi) available here) in your development environment and test your app on them.
You have to create different .apk for each version and define this in your application's manifest file.use this link
http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens-distribution.html