page.title=Designing for Multiple Screens

trainingnavtop=true
startpage=true
next.title=Supporting Different Screen Sizes
next.link=screensizes.html

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<h2>Dependencies and prerequisites</h2> 

<ul>
  <li>Android 1.6 or higher (2.1+ for the sample app)</li>
  <li>Basic knowledge of <a
href="http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals/activities.html">Activities</a> and
<a href="http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals/fragments.html">Fragments</a></li>
  <li>Experience building an Android <a
href="http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/index.html"> User Interface</a></li>
  <li>Several features require the use of the <a
href="{@docRoot}sdk/compatibility-library.html">support library</a></li>
</ul>

<h2>You should also read</h2>

<ul>
  <li><a href="{@docRoot}guide/practices/screens_support.html">Supporting Multiple Screens</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>Android powers hundreds of device types with several different screen sizes,
ranging from small phones to large TV sets. Therefore, it’s important
that you design your application to be compatible with all screen sizes so it’s available to as many
users as possible.</p>

<p>But being compatible with different device types is not enough. Each screen
size offers different possibilities and challenges for user interaction, so in
order to truly satisfy and impress your users, your application must go beyond merely
<em>supporting</em> multiple screens: it must <em>optimize</em> the user
experience for each screen configuration.</p>

<p>This class shows you how to implement a user interface that's
optimized for several screen configurations.</p>

<p>The code in each lesson comes from a sample application that demonstrates best practices in
optimizing for multiple screens. You can download the sample (to the right) and use it as a source
of reusable code for your own application.</p>

<p class="note"><strong>Note:</strong> This class and the associated sample use the <a
href="{@docRoot}sdk/compatibility-library.html">support library</a> in order to use the {@link
android.app.Fragment} APIs on versions lower than Android 3.0. You must download and add the
library to your application in order to use all APIs in this class.</p>
 

<h2>Lessons</h2> 
 
<dl> 
  <dt><b><a href="screensizes.html">Supporting Different Screen Sizes</a></b></dt> 
    <dd>This lesson walks you through how to design layouts that adapts
        several different screen sizes (using flexible dimensions for
        views, {@link android.widget.RelativeLayout}, screen size and orientation qualifiers,
        alias filters, and nine-patch bitmaps).</dd> 
 
  <dt><b><a href="screendensities.html">Supporting Different Screen
        Densities</a></b></dt> 
    <dd>This lesson shows you how to support screens that have different
        pixel densities (using density-independent pixels and providing
        bitmaps appropriate for each density).</dd> 
 
  <dt><b><a href="adaptui.html">Implementing Adaptative UI Flows</a></b></dt> 
    <dd>This lesson shows you how to implement your UI flow in a way
        that adapts to several screen size/density combinations
        (run-time detection of active layout, reacting according to
        current layout, handling screen configuration changes).</dd> 
</dl>