Smashing Android UI

Chapter 15: Beyond Scalable – Responsive Design

Until this point, the book has covered scalable Android user interfaces in the context of small variation of screen sizes. By utilizing layouts and other resources correctly, your app will scale nicely to phones with large 4.5-inch screens as well as to 3.5-inch screens. But what do you do when you want to go beyond these constraints?

A design approach called responsive design has become popular in web design when facing this same problem. Websites nowadays have to work on smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and even on connected TVs. Simply stretching the layout from smaller screens to larger screens isn’t enough anymore. The idea is to dynamically change the order of components that are visible by rearranging the page structure. This usually means reducing the number of visible columns.

This chapter introduces you to responsive design on the Android.

More Android devices than just phones

Let’s look at the reasoning why more heavyweight methods are needed than just the layout managers. Android is a platform of diversity. As you read in the introductory chapters, there are hundreds of different devices out there. Many of them have much larger screens than the average smartphone device. The large screens require developers and designers to change their design approach. The smartphone design simply stretched to a larger screen doesn’t utilize the screen effectively and makes for a subpar user experience. Take a look at Figures ...