Android Layout Design Principles

I have been doing a lot of research on the best ways to design layouts for different screen sizes, screen density and orientations and I am getting increasingly confused. 1. Design

Solution 1:

You can try folling links: Question seems to be broad. but you can read this.

1. Welcome to Android Design,

2. Is there a standard layout for an Android app or should I design mine from first principles?,

3. 10 Tips For Android UI Design,

for 9-patch images you can see this post by me.

4. Utility of android nine patch

5. Education Guidelines

For supporting multipal device layout based,

please go through Supporting Multiple Screens this link:

For multpal layout component

res/layout/my_layout.xml             // normal screen size ("default")
res/layout-small/my_layout.xml       // small screen size
res/layout-large/my_layout.xml       // large screen size
res/layout-xlarge/my_layout.xml      // Hd tablet

for orientation.

        res/layout/              # default (portrait)
            main.xml
        res/layout-land/         # landscape
            main.xml
        res/layout-large/        # large (portrait)
            main.xml
        res/layout-large-land/   # large landscape
            main.xml


1. You can also use `qualifier` for having multipal resource. 

Solution 2:

The Play Store allows you to publish multiple APKs' targeting devices with different hardware. The device property that you are targeting is specified in the manifest of each different APK. For different screen densities, you use the <compatible-screens> element. For instance, an application targeting small-sized devices with ldpi resolution would include:

<compatible-screens><screenandroid:screenSize="small"android:screenDensity="ldpi" /></compatible-screens>

In this way, you compile & build different APKs' for the same application targeting different devices, and you include different-sized images in your res/drawable directory depending on the device resolution that each individual APK is aimed at. The different APKs' can be published on the Play Store under the same application heading and will be automatically filtered by the Play Store Services APK (i.e. the Play Store app present on every Android device) based on that device's hardware.

References:

1.Multiple APK Support.

2.Distributing to Specific Screens.

3.Filters on Google Play.

Solution 3:

One thing that you can do is create different folders for each type of screen size / resolution such as

values- - ldpi - mdpi - hdpi - xhdpi - nodpi - tvdpi

And them inside values you can have folders such as dimens, integers, booleans, etc..

Them inside your XML layouts you use something such as android:width="@integer/size_for_this"

Android will know which folder to reference based on the device DPI. You can also specify other type of folders such as by Width, height, etc...

More info in the Official documentation Providing Resources