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I think Android is shooting itself in the foot here by making things look more complicated than they might be. Take a look at the documentation for screen suppo

by GBKS 12y ago

I think Android is shooting itself in the foot here by making things look more complicated than they might be. Take a look at the documentation for screen support (http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support...). They split phone sizes (2-10") into four generalized sizes (small, normal, large, xlarge). Then they split screen density into generalized densities (ldpi, mdpi, hdpi, xhdpi) based on 3:4:6:8 ratios. The example on the page lists 5 different layout XML files (the 4 previously mentioned + extra large landscape orientation) for different sizes, and three folders for image assets in different densities. But, there are tablet layouts for Android 3.2+, which use a completely different system based on size qualifiers where you can provide minimum/maximum pixel sizes for layouts. The logic for iOS seems super simple in comparison. With a few Android projects under your belt, you have probably internalized how everything works, and which parts are fringe cases you can ignore. But if you're new to this (or a journalist/analyst with limited technical depth), it seems like an absolute mess. Simply rewriting this documentation and providing better tutorials and resources could go very far to clarify the situation.

ZoFreX 12y ago
Generalised sizes are a deprecated way of handling screen sizes on Android, from version 3.2 onward we use far more traditional dividers such as minimum width. For many developers it's viable to support only 4+, which lets you avoid a lot of the trickiness. Also, even if you are supporting 2.x, you don't HAVE to have a separate layout file for each generalized size. If you make a flexible layout that works on all sizes, you can just declare it once (and doing so is not difficult in most cases). I totally agree the documentation needs work. Some areas have not been updated in a very long time.

by GBKS 12y ago

ZoFreX 12y ago

Generalised sizes are a deprecated way of handling screen sizes on Android, from version 3.2 onward we use far more traditional dividers such as minimum width. For many developers it's viable to support only 4+, which lets you avoid a lot of the trickiness. Also, even if you are supporting 2.x, you don't HAVE to have a separate layout file for each generalized size. If you make a flexible layout that works on all sizes, you can just declare it once (and doing so is not difficult in most cases). I totally agree the documentation needs work. Some areas have not been updated in a very long time.