I'm creating a splash screen that will display while my Android application loads. I'd like to create it at the correct size so Android won't auto-scale it up or down to fit the screen. (It's a bitmap image, a photograph of an oil painting, so I can't just turn it into a nine-patch.)
But there are at least three important screen sizes I care about: 320x480, 480x854 (Droid), and 480x800 (Nexus One).
I've read the documentation on supporting multiple screen sizes, but I still don't see how I'm supposed to configure different splash screens for Droid/Nexus one (they're both "hdpi" resources as far as Android is concerned), and I don't know exactly how large my splash screen should be in any case. (How tall is the OS title bar/menu in Droid? N1?)
What size should I make these images, and how do I tell Android to use the correct size on a given screen?
You don't need to worry about the absolute screen size or status bars or anything — that's why we have nine-patch images.
What I did was have an image that looked good for each resolution — essentially a logo on a transparent background, with some text at the bottom.
Then I chopped off quite a lot of space at the top and side edges, made a nine-patch border round the image, with a single pixel near the left, right and top edges. This allows the image to expand evenly at the sides and top to fill the screen.
Edit, in response to Dan's comment below:
Yes, there is a way to determine which graphics should be used for which explicit screen sizes, but it's deprecated.
Just as there are drawable-hdpi and -ldpi resource qualifiers, it's also possible to use drawable-HHHxWWW — the larger pixel dimension coming first.
e.g. drawable-800x480 and drawable-854x480
Okay, firstly: you can find the device model via android.os.Build and use that to determine which image to show.
Secondly, I personally wouldn't bother. Layouts should be done in dip since every android screen is 320x480 dip I believe, and android maintains aspect ratio among devices very well through this in my experience. A 480x800 splash set to fill parent has been pretty reliable on both N1 and the droid as far as I have encountered.
Another solution that I implemented is to put an ImageView that fills the screen (width and height both "MATCH_PARENT") with scale type "centerCrop". This way, the image is not stretched but cropped along the edges. Try not to put important content (logos and stuff like that) close to the edges. If it is a photograph, I hope that the edges are "expendable" and can be cropped out.
Related
I have read Android guidelines regarding different screen sizes, but still I have some considerations.
Client has given me an image from PSD file which has certain resolution that fits
1080 X 1920. I just use wrap_content, and it perfectly fits the part
of screen.
I am not using DP to define its width-height, If i was using DP it would have
adjusted image according to screen sizes.
My questions are,
Does wrap_content works the same way as Density Pixels?
Is it also responsive, and changes the image width-height according
to different screens?
If not, then Is it necessary to use DP to support different screen
sizes ?
Thanks
The setting wrap_content tells your view to size itself to the dimensions required by its content. In the case of your test, your image is 1080x1920 and your device's screen resolution is likely 1080x1920 as well, hence the perfect fit. Since you set the width and height to wrap_content, Android is simply trying to use as much screen space as it needs to correctly display the amount of content it was supplied. In this case, since the available screen space matches the size of the content, it just fits perfectly.
But what if the device screen isn't 1080x1920? In that case, Android will only use as much space as it can, but still attempt to fit the image inside the bounds of the available screen space. In other words, the system will appropriately scale the image down to get it in the container you have provided for it. But this can lead to awkward fits if the aspect ratio isn't the same as the image. For instance, see this screenshot below:
This image is 1920x1080, but notice that it doesn't quite fit. That's because this nexus 7 screen is 1824x1200 when viewed in landscape. Additionally, the toolbar at the top of the screen is eating up available screenspace, making my viewable area even smaller and more awkwardly shaped. So while the system would love this image to extend all the way to the left and right borders, it can't, because then that would mean the height would be bigger than the viewable space. Since I used wrap_content to display this image, the system is using as much vertical space as it can, and the result is that the image doesn't quite fit the horizontal space.
So to more directly address your questions, yes wrap_content is a relative size setting that will make it easier to get a consistent look across multiple screen sizes, similar to using dp. But realize that there are hundreds, if not thousands of available Android devices on the market, and they all have varying screen sizes and densities. So your drawables may not always appear the way you want them on every device.
The way to overcome this is to supply multiple versions of your assets and provide alternate layout files for different screen sizes and densities. Once you do that, all you can do is test, test, and test some more. Use emulators for weird screen densities or devices you don't own, just to make sure you're getting the look you want. In the case of your 1920x1080 image, it looks great on that one device, but how will it fit a large tablet or a tiny handset that is smaller than the resolution of the image? These are situations you must account for in your design.
I suggest you read these resources, as they are hugely helpful in learning how to deal with issues resulting from varying screen sizes and densities:
http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html
http://developer.android.com/training/multiscreen/screensizes.html
When implementing a splash image which has such a design that image cannot be skewed or cropped if the device screen is of different resolution or size, how to perfectly implement this? Image must be a real full-screen without black background due to different aspect ration.
Shall we create splash image for every device screen size? This is how we do at the moment and it's pretty much work. So we go to Android developer support screen advise page to know what images sizes we need. you see, there are a lot of them.
Is there a better and quicker solution?
just get the splash screen in 1920*1080 and put in xxhdpi android system will auto ajust it
Stretch occurs when when try to fit an image into an image view of different Aspect-Ratio.
Create 2 or 3 images for major Aspect-Ratio and then use android:scaleType="fitXY" on your image view, for devices that uses different aspect-ratio than you specify it won't differ a lot so you don't get a noticeable stretch.
Most common aspect-ratio are:
2:1 // ultra wide ex. 800*400 screen
16:9 // HD wide ex. 1920*1080 , 1208*720 , 720*450
16:10 // wide
4:3 // old tv square-like
If you can prepare a image resolution 1920*1280 and put in drawable-xxhdpi, it would fit to any screen
Try to create a 9-patch image and use it as a background of the splash activity/view/whatever. Put your fixed size logo (or whatever you want to display) in the non-scalable part of the 9-patch and let the other areas stretch to fill the view. Note that the non-scalable area (e.g. your logo) should have size that will fit the smallest display you want to support.
What is the applications screen size without the status bar and softkeys(in some phones)?
Like for Example i know:
320X480 trimmed down to 320X455 which is the basesize.
but what about others , i have done many calculations and a lot of searches online to figure out a defined size for other screen but i seems can't, Also While applying the formula *.75 ldpi, *1.5 hdpi, *2.25 xhdpi to get other screen, it doesn't add up.
Like 320X480 is mdpi to get the hdpi do *1.5 and you will get 480X720 which is not the situation for devices out their ! and using this method my application images where stretched, this method is according to the Google documentation, i'm confused as hell.
I have tried to et sizes using the emulator also it was very different! for height.
So if the problem is with height only, i'm thinking creating background as patterns and then work only on the width of the screen size and re-size every other elements to screen width only like 240px, 320px, 480px, 720px and also consider the size of them to fit minimum height.
I believe it's not possible to define a height for android which will go like generic because of the variety of android devices.
So what do you think about this approach to use background as pattern and forget about every device on earth height ?
you can use tile pattern, create a small texture and then make it tileable drawable in xml, so it will be tiled across screen, or the second might be using 9-patch images, in that way you can select which area of the image scale and which area to not scale, so they will be scaled according to that way.
I have a problem with supporting different screen sizes. My application has different drawables for mdpi (320x480), hdpi (480x800) or ldpi (240x432). I also have different layout for small, normal-notlong, normal-long. Every size scaling or placement features are done in dp. However my problem is that I need to precisely place an element on the screen so it will perfectly fit to the background. One example here is an image that I download and show inside a frame that is part of the background. Or I also draw a circle (using drawArc) on the top of an imageview object and need to place it precisely to fit a 'black hole' that is on that image. Because the position is dependent on the background I place the elements with parent margins. As I wrote I am using dp for that. However If I fit my setting for a 320x480 3" screen and then change to 3.1" the elements are slightly misplaced and don't fit the background. The same if I have 480x800 3.5" device but change to 3.6" - the elements are misplaced slightly but that is enaught to look poorly in the design. What can I do about it? I am sure there has to be a way to achieve this on any screen size - i.e. games must use some kind of that mechanism and they work on any screen size. Can any one help?
I would like to show a splash screen image. I've read Screen compatibility overview about the different directories (ldpi, mdpi, ...) to create under res/ but I've not understood if, other than creating the same image of 240x320, 320x480 and 480x800 I need to do other things to achieve a good result.
Can anyone suggest me which is the best thing to do?
What you describe is what you need to do. You need an image for each screen pixel density group (ldpi, mdpi, hpdi and poss xhdpi)
Other things you can do?
Use a background around the image so the image appears to stretch (e.g. if image is white near the edges, use a white background). It'll look better if there isn't an obvious border around the image and it fades into a background.
The background/borders could be a 9-patch, stretchable image
In theory you could provide a lot more images and select them at runtime based on actual screen size, but it's a very bad idea (you never know what new sizes are coming)
Remember to include portrait and landscape versions - never a good idea to assume one orientation if you can possibly avoid it
Think of an Android screen like a resizable web page - they come in various different sizes and shapes, and your layout needs to stretch and adapt for all.
Like Ollie C said, I also make a 9-patch that I set in background, the only probleme with this methos is that your Splashscreen must have uniform stretchable areas.