Make An Android App Works For Multiple Screens

If I make an android app using android 2.3.3 and after completion i make it work for other devices, is this a good idea ? Because i have not developed app for multiple screen sizes

Solution 1:

The best place to start this kind of research is with Google's Android Development website, which has tons of helpful guides and resources. Here are two links which may help you with your problem:

http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html

http://developer.android.com/training/multiscreen/screensizes.html

And another which discusses layouts. The Dev Guides have a bunch of mini-tutorials to teach you how to use and the differences between many views.

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/declaring-layout.html

On the whole, you should definitely start coding with multiple screen sizes in mind, although this goes along with just having good android coding practices. In general, get acquainted with the xml attributes that start with android:layout_ for example android:layout_width and android:layout_weight and the way your image resource folders need to be managed. In my experience, once you get comfortable with how layouts work on Android, making sure they work over multiple screens will come easily. Having a basic understand of it before get in too deep in will save you a lot of headache and recoding later. Don't be afraid to make simple apps to test different layout techniques you're learning. Good luck.

Solution 2:

I think you should do more research from your part, but here is a link to get you started.

http://developer.android.com/training/basics/supporting-devices/screens.html

Solution 3:

First decide on the minimum SDK version you are willing to support (let's say minSdkVersion="8" for example).

Second, build your application against Android 4.1 and set your targetSdkVersion="16". Doing so will allow you to make use of some of the prettier UI features (i.e. Holo themes) on newer devices.

Third, test your application extensively using the emulator on devices running SDK 8 through 16. If you make any method calls from the newer APIs, make sure you prevent older devices from invoking these methods (as they will not be recognized and will crash your app at runtime). At this point you can optimize your application for different screen sizes (i.e. phones and tablets).