Scott Main 801fda548c AndroidU lesson on designing for multiple screens.
This change adds the text for the AndroidU lesson "Designing for Multiple
Screens", which shows how to write applications that adapt properly
to screen size, density and orientation for maximum compatibility.
Update makefile and resources-data.js for rendering source in HTML
Add ZIP file for sample

Change-Id: I671bb3063d5bf02681bc547ffe5262a9df22037a
2011-12-12 17:13:31 -08:00

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page.title=Supporting Different Densities
parent.title=Designing for Multiple Screens
parent.link=index.html
trainingnavtop=true
previous.title=Supporting Different Screen Sizes
previous.link=screensizes.html
next.title=Implementing Adaptative UI Flows
next.link=adaptui.html
@jd:body
<!-- This is the training bar -->
<div id="tb-wrapper">
<div id="tb">
<h2>This lesson teaches you to</h2>
<ol>
<li><a href="#TaskUseDP">Use Density-independent Pixels</a></li>
<li><a href="#TaskProvideAltBmp">Provide Alternative Bitmaps</a></li>
</ol>
<h2>You should also read</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="{@docRoot}guide/practices/screens_support.html">Supporting Multiple Screens</a></li>
<li><a href="{@docRoot}guide/practices/ui_guidelines/icon_design.html">Icon Design
Guidelines</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>Try it out</h2>
<div class="download-box">
<a href="http://developer.android.com/shareables/training/NewsReader.zip" class="button">Download
the sample app</a>
<p class="filename">NewsReader.zip</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>This lesson shows you how to support different screen densities
by providing different resources and using resolution-independent units of
measurements.</p>
<h2 id="TaskUseDP">Use Density-independent Pixels</h2>
<p>One common pitfall you must avoid when designing your layouts is using
absolute pixels to define distances or sizes. Defining layout dimensions with
pixels is a problem because different screens have different pixel densities,
so the same number of pixels may correspond to different physical sizes on
different devices. Therefore, when specifying dimensions, always use either
<code>dp</code> or <code>sp</code> units. A <code>dp</code> is a density-independent pixel
that corresponds to the physical size of a pixel at 160 dpi. An <code>sp</code> is the same
base unit, but is scaled by the user's preferred text size (its a
scale-independent pixel), so you should use this measurement unit when defining
text size (but never for layout sizes).</p>
<p>For example, when you specify spacing between two views, use <code>dp</code>
rather than <code>px</code>:</p>
<pre>
&lt;Button android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="&#64;string/clickme"
android:layout_marginTop="20dp" /&gt;
</pre>
<p>When specifying text size, always use <code>sp</code>:</p>
<pre>
&lt;TextView android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:textSize="20sp" /&gt;
</pre>
<h2 id="TaskProvideAltBmp">Provide Alternative Bitmaps</h2>
<p>Since Android runs in devices with a wide variety of screen densities,
you should always provide your bitmap resources tailored to each of
the generalized density buckets: low, medium, high and extra-high density.
This will help you achieve good graphical quality and performance on all
screen densities.</p>
<p>To generate these images, you should start with your raw resource in
vector format and generate the images for each density using the following
size scale:</p>
<p><ul>
<li><code>xhdpi</code>: 2.0
<li><code>hdpi</code>: 1.5
<li><code>mdpi</code>: 1.0 (baseline)
<li><code>ldpi</code>: 0.75
</ul></p>
<p>This means that if you generate a 200x200 image for <code>xhdpi</code>
devices, you should generate the same resource in 150x150 for <code>hdpi</code>,
100x100 for <code>mdpi</code> and finally a 75x75 image for <code>ldpi</code>
devices.</p>
<p>Then, place the generated image files in the appropriate subdirectory
under <code>res/</code> and the system will pick the correct one automatically
based on the screen density of the device your application is running on:</p>
<pre class="classic no-pretty-print">
MyProject/
res/
drawable-xhdpi/
awesomeimage.png
drawable-hdpi/
awesomeimage.png
drawable-mdpi/
awesomeimage.png
drawable-ldpi/
awesomeimage.png
</pre>
<p>Then, any time you reference <code>&#64;drawable/awesomeimage</code>, the system selects the
appropriate bitmap based on the screen's dpi.</p>
<p>For more tips and guidelines for creating icon assets for your application, see the <a
href="{@docRoot}guide/practices/ui_guidelines/icon_design.html">Icon Design
Guidelines</a>.</p>