Learning Android™ Application Programming: A Hands-On Guide to Building Android Applications

Using Resource Dimensions

There should be a better way in Android to have slightly smaller buttons on a smaller screen than by creating a new layout—and there is. With dimension values, a single layout can scale to a wide variety of sizes and densities. The other option is to create a new layout file for every configuration, which can become a maintenance nightmare very quickly because of duplicated code. Instead, having a single layout file that loads the appropriate dimension information at run time will make your life as a developer quite a bit simpler.

Here’s how to create a layout for a small screen by using the small resource qualifier.

1. Delete the layout-small directory and the timer_layout file inside it.

2. Create a new values-small ...