I start developing a new Android application from scratch these days.
The company I work for has its own designer.
The designer asked me for the sizes of screens she should design for and I didn't know what to tell her - I want to support all the Android based smartphones with all the different densities and screen sizes.
I'm familiar with this doc about supprting multiple screens.
Question #1:
So, can I assume that all the smartphones are "normal" screen size, and look at "Table 3" at the bottom of link I've added, at the "Normal screens" row and tell the designer that I need 4 versions of each page, as listed in this row: WQVGA400 (240x400), HVGA (320x480), WVGA800 (480x800) , 640x960 ?
Will these resolutions cover all the Android based smartphones?
Question #2:
While working on the project, the designer might tell me:"the title bar should be 40px long in the 240x400 screen", how can I translate these pixels into dip's? How can I achieve easy daily work when it comes to working with the designer? Should I just develop first only for mdpi, on 320x480 screen where 1 pixel = 1 dip and then no translation is needed?
Thanks in advance!
The new Android Design Guide should give you all information you need.
The transformation between dip and px is based on the type of dpi you have and not on the screen size. Define your own title bar to make sure, that the height is the specified one.
No You should say designer that it's most common values, but not all possible. So, try to get design with comments "1/5 of phone screen and 1/10 for tablet screen" not "40px". Other possible way - to create design for only resolution, and then stretch it to other screens.
This question gives good answer
The answer for the question 1 is no. For instance, Galaxy Nexus has a resolution 1280x720, Droid Razr 960×540.
ANSWER #1: No
ANSWER #2: Have a look at this link to understand a bit more about dip.
I think the iPhone way of doing things doesn't quite work on Android (Limited iPhone experience here but you pretty much have set graphics for everything right?) on Android the designer will probably have to get familiar with the layout system or somebody else would need to take a reference design and translate it into a layout file.
Related
I have read an much more documents on android and other blogs about how to support multiple screen sizes. And To some extent I am successful in making some good looking designs for apps. Now let me start from the start what is the problem and what I wanted to ask from you guys.
Android has now different screen sizes of different screen densities and having different resolutions. so We have to face 3 different things the size , density and the resolution.
Now Let take example of Samsung s4(xxhdpi device having 1080*1920px) , Samsung Grand (hdpi 480*800px) and both has same screen size that is 5 inch
and Samsung galaxy note 10.1 (Mdpi devices ) 10 inch screen size.
Now android says to make different drawable and put them into respective folder, its ok, let suppose its done. Now what ?
lets suppose , What if I have to set the image in left top with the marginleft of 5 dp and some other views according to them with different specific paddings and margins in dps and suppose I have set all of these in my layout according to hdpi device, which we know is not going to look good in samsung s4 xxhdpi device and tablet.
and Also as design pattern says to change design for the tablets according to your need , but on the other hand the support of making different layout has been deprecated now we have to use different values folder.
so in short what is a best way and what is clear thing for making drawables.
how should we re size our drawables to support all devices , and also if making different layout has been deprecated now what should we do to make our design look good and approximately same in all devices?
also how to judge that device is tablet and we should now start showing the multi pane design ?
please do not refer me to android developer website , I know its very helping and I learnt a lot from there , but right now I just want to discuss the technical issues and want to take advantage of some experienced developers. Thanks
I'm required to design an apps for android.
And after some reading, I find out android device are divided into few categories in term of resolution, like
small screen
normal screen
large screen
extra large screen
but in different density.
So lets say, now I need to come out a design for normal screen, what resolution that I should use for the "look & feel" of the apps UI.
From the reading, I know android apps are use dp instead of px. So, is it means I have to convert few specific screen size to dp before I start to design ?
Or I just simply target a common resolution for normal screen size like 320x480, provided I will have few set drawable in different density ?
Please correct me if I had mistaken it.
Thank you
Good question, so far we have 5 screen densities :
xxhdpi,xhdpi,hdpi,mdpi,ldpi , now if you have an image resource you will need to create 5 copies of it, its always recommended to start by the xxhdpi till you reach to the smallest,
however you can use online calculators that will calculate the PX and DP for all the densities, i recommend these two tools android developer toolbox and developers tools, and with developers tools you can test the colors, and how are they going to look like in the screen in HEX decimal.
Yes it is true android has following types of devices
LDPI
MDPI
HDPI
XHDPI
http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html
this link gives you all the description
and ya you have to create icons and images supporting to all the devices resolution wise.
There are various devices with various screen sizes.
Usually, they are mentioned as LDPI, MDPI, HDPI or XHDPI devices.
Although, in coding there are many things to be kept in mind so that you achieve a good uniform design in all your devices !
Refer to this link. It is always good to follow official sites, rather than other tutorials out there. Make a habit of using relativelayout !
Also in the link you can explore many things to get the knowledge of designing in Android.
My application is supporting 3 type of density ldpi (120),mdpi(160),hdpi(320) and for that we have three folder for resources (ldpi,mdpi,hdpi).
But my problem is occurring in HTC sensation XE (540x960) having density ~256 dpi.and my resources is stretched.
In manifest file
<supports-screens android:xlargeScreens="false" />
means i am not supporting for xlarge screen so does 540x960 come in high density??.
How can i overcome this problem???
Android Multiscreen Support issue says "You can also use a combination of density and size qualifiers but that still leaves some room for two different resolutions falling into the same bucket."
What should be the name of drawble folder for this kind of resolution??
or is there any other way to short out this issue.
EDIT : My problem is not with layout, my problem 540x960 come in HDPI but my hdpi drawbles are designed related to 480x800
Help me..
Thanks in advance..
you can use below combination for Layout for HTC sensation XE (540x960) :
res/layout-w540dp-h960dp/layout.xml
this will use for pick layout for this device and for drawable it will pick image from hdpi because in this developer site 256 dp come in range of hdpi . http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html.
hope this will help you.
Your problem is that you have designed your bitmaps for a particular screen size rather than screen density.
Plainly put, you should not do that. There are a huge number of different form factors and screen sizes out there, and you cannot hope to have graphics sized for all of them. So you fix this issue for 540x960 screens... what then with your users who are on 480x854 displays (most hdpi motorola devices)? Will you include different graphics for 1024x720 and 1280x720 displays if you're developing for that? What about 1280x800?
Granted - it can be a pain to deal with these issues, but that is the price we pay for diversity of devices. And Google has provided a fair amount of powerful tools at our disposal to deal with this.
When you are designing an app for Android, you need to think of the design as if you were designing a website - not a desktop (or IOS) program. All (or most) of the tricks that you use for designing a website also apply here - plus you have the density-awareness and 9.patch tools.
And if you really cannot adjust your graphics/layout to the screen without messing it up, you can always center the layout on the display (or align it left or right, depending on what you think looks best).
Edit:
As I mention above, the core to flexible UI design in Android is to think of your app like a web site. Roman Nurik has an article discussing this on the Android blog.
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/09/thinking-like-web-designer.html
Apart from that, it is mostly covered by the Android site, etc.
http://developer.android.com/training/multiscreen/index.html
Using the right layouts and 9-patch images (not always - sometimes static images are better) will allow you to create designs that look good on all phones. But you have to realize that - like a website designed in a browser - you do not and can not have 100% control over how things are displayed on every single device. What you need to achieve is that it is still accessible and good-looking even when displayed on a device that you did not anticipate beforehand.
You have to name the drawable as per your pixel density and the screen size. The calculation is here...
dpi = sqrt (540^2+960^2) / 4.3"(Device size) = ~256 dp = px / (dpi / 160) = 540 / (dpi / 160) = 330
The drawable will be named as drawable-sw330dp. I have tested this. And this works good. No problem with other drawables either. Layout Will be layout-sw330dp
Or you can try this by drawable-sw540p. I haven't tested it yet. But I guess it will work good. Layout Will be layout-sw540p
My application is supporting 3 type of density ldpi (120),mdpi(160),hdpi(320) and for that we have three folder for resources (ldpi,mdpi,hdpi).
But my problem is occurring in HTC sensation XE (540x960) having density ~256 dpi.and my resources is stretched.
In manifest file
<supports-screens android:xlargeScreens="false" />
means i am not supporting for xlarge screen so does 540x960 come in high density??.
How can i overcome this problem???
Android Multiscreen Support issue says "You can also use a combination of density and size qualifiers but that still leaves some room for two different resolutions falling into the same bucket."
What should be the name of drawble folder for this kind of resolution??
or is there any other way to short out this issue.
EDIT : My problem is not with layout, my problem 540x960 come in HDPI but my hdpi drawbles are designed related to 480x800
Help me..
Thanks in advance..
you can use below combination for Layout for HTC sensation XE (540x960) :
res/layout-w540dp-h960dp/layout.xml
this will use for pick layout for this device and for drawable it will pick image from hdpi because in this developer site 256 dp come in range of hdpi . http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html.
hope this will help you.
Your problem is that you have designed your bitmaps for a particular screen size rather than screen density.
Plainly put, you should not do that. There are a huge number of different form factors and screen sizes out there, and you cannot hope to have graphics sized for all of them. So you fix this issue for 540x960 screens... what then with your users who are on 480x854 displays (most hdpi motorola devices)? Will you include different graphics for 1024x720 and 1280x720 displays if you're developing for that? What about 1280x800?
Granted - it can be a pain to deal with these issues, but that is the price we pay for diversity of devices. And Google has provided a fair amount of powerful tools at our disposal to deal with this.
When you are designing an app for Android, you need to think of the design as if you were designing a website - not a desktop (or IOS) program. All (or most) of the tricks that you use for designing a website also apply here - plus you have the density-awareness and 9.patch tools.
And if you really cannot adjust your graphics/layout to the screen without messing it up, you can always center the layout on the display (or align it left or right, depending on what you think looks best).
Edit:
As I mention above, the core to flexible UI design in Android is to think of your app like a web site. Roman Nurik has an article discussing this on the Android blog.
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/09/thinking-like-web-designer.html
Apart from that, it is mostly covered by the Android site, etc.
http://developer.android.com/training/multiscreen/index.html
Using the right layouts and 9-patch images (not always - sometimes static images are better) will allow you to create designs that look good on all phones. But you have to realize that - like a website designed in a browser - you do not and can not have 100% control over how things are displayed on every single device. What you need to achieve is that it is still accessible and good-looking even when displayed on a device that you did not anticipate beforehand.
You have to name the drawable as per your pixel density and the screen size. The calculation is here...
dpi = sqrt (540^2+960^2) / 4.3"(Device size) = ~256 dp = px / (dpi / 160) = 540 / (dpi / 160) = 330
The drawable will be named as drawable-sw330dp. I have tested this. And this works good. No problem with other drawables either. Layout Will be layout-sw330dp
Or you can try this by drawable-sw540p. I haven't tested it yet. But I guess it will work good. Layout Will be layout-sw540p
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'.