On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 4:36 PM, Doug Gordon <[email protected]> wrote: > Mainly, it seems like many applications would be better off being redesigned > or offered in separate versions for tablets as opposed to simply being > handled by different layouts within a single app. A device like the Xoom has > a resolution of 1280x800, but this is on a 10.1-inch screen where there's a > lot of physical real-estate, making it hard to simply scale existing > layouts.
That is why Honeycomb introduces the fragments system -- a layer you can introduce between the view/layout and the activity, to allow you to organize your UI into modules that can be assembled into different sorts of activities based on screen size. The quintessential example of this is a ListFragment and a separate detail fragment (e.g., list of emails and the body of the selected email). For large- or xlarge-screen devices, you might put both of those fragments in one activity. For small- and normal-screen devices, you would put the ListFragment in one activity and the detail fragment in a separate activity. While there is nothing stopping you from creating a separate tablet-only app, and using <supports-screens> to ensure the tablet-only app only winds up on large-/xlarge-screen devices, users can still always select to install your "normal" app on their tablet. This means, IMHO, that your "normal" app has to not look bad on a large-/xlarge- device (e.g., tons of wasted whitespace). You might reserve the separate tablet-only app as a paid upsell with extra tablet-specific features, or something. -- Mark Murphy (a Commons Guy) http://commonsware.com | http://github.com/commonsguy http://commonsware.com/blog | http://twitter.com/commonsguy Android Training in London: http://bit.ly/smand1 and http://bit.ly/smand2 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
