{"id":334762,"date":"2010-02-18T08:30:06","date_gmt":"2010-02-18T13:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.androidguys.com\/?p=13406"},"modified":"2010-02-18T08:30:06","modified_gmt":"2010-02-18T13:30:06","slug":"handling-multiple-screen-sizes-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/334762","title":{"rendered":"Handling Multiple Screen Sizes, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>This is the first part of a several part series on handling multiple screen sizes in your Android projects. This material is adapted from a chapter in The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development, Version 3.0<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The simplest approach to handling multiple screen sizes in Android is to design your user interfaces such that they automatically scale for the screen size, without any size-specific code or resources. In other words, “it just works”.<\/p>\n

This implies, though, that everything you use in your user interface can be gracefully scaled by Android and that everything will fit, even on a QVGA screen.<\/p>\n

Here are some tips for achieving this “all in one” solution:<\/p>\n

Don’t Think About Positions, Think About Rules<\/h2>\n

Some developers, perhaps those coming from the “drag-and-drop” school of UI development, think first and foremost about the positions of widgets. They think that they want certain widgets to be certain fixed sizes at certain fixed locations. They get frustrated with Android layout manager (containers) and may gravitate to the deprecated AbsoluteLayout<\/span> as a way to design UIs they way they used to.<\/p>\n

That rarely works well even on desktops, as can be seen by applications that do not handle window resizing very well. Similarly, it will not work on mobile devices, particularly Android, with its range of screen sizes and resolutions.<\/p>\n

Instead of thinking about positions, think about rules. You need to teach Android the “business rules” about where widgets should be sized and placed, with Android then interpreting those rules based upon what the device’s screen actually supports in terms of resolution.<\/p>\n

The simplest rules are the fill_parent<\/span> and wrap_content<\/span> values for android:layout_width<\/span> and android:layout_height<\/span>. Those do not specify specific sizes, but rather adapt to the space available.<\/p>\n

The richest environment for easily specifying rules is to use RelativeLayout<\/span>. While complicated on the surface, RelativeLayout<\/span> does an excellent job of letting you control your layout while still adapting it to other screen sizes. For example, you can:<\/p>\n