Android Application Development For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Tweaking the Task Reminder App for Tablets

To help accommodate the differences, you use a few techniques to upgrade the Task Reminder app so that it can work on both tablets and phones.

Use these strategies every time you design an Android application because it’s likely that most of your apps target users of both types of devices.

Anticipating screen size with a flowing layout

Go with the flow when you’re designing your layout to fit multiple screen sizes. A flowing layout skips a lot of hassle and frustration for both the designer and the user.

If you’re familiar with iOS development, you know that you have only two screen sizes to worry about: iPhone and iPad. Each size requires both low- and high-resolution images, but that’s easy enough to handle: Design for iPhone first, and then for iPad, and then plug in the low- and high-resolution images in the respective versions and you’re done.

Android isn’t quite as simple to design for. Layouts in Android need to “flow” — that is, resize and rearrange themselves — so that they can accommodate minor (and sometimes major) differences in the width and height of users’ devices. Where iOS has only two different sizes, Android has dozens or hundreds.

It’s similar to designing for websites — when you’re building a website, you can’t assume that all users will view it in browser windows that are exactly the same size (800x600pixels). Users ...