Ideally we'd be building a single application for all platforms. Personally I'd probably approach the issue by designing for what I regard as the 'primary' platform first, optimising the UI and interaction model to give the best possible experience. Then I'd look at it from the other platform's point of view to decide if the UI is going to be completely different or broadly similar. The more there is in common, the more I'd try to stick with one application.
Of course I like the fragments approach combined with the size/density support but equally an equally good solution would be to upload multiple versions of an app into the marketplace under the same SKU, tagged for tablet or phone scale screens. Crucially the user would see and purchase one product, they wouldn't even realise that the download for their Xoom was different to the one for their Nexus S. There will be times when I'd want to take advantage of the bigger size of a tablet to create a much richer UI with a different interaction model than the one I'd provide on a phone, and complexity may force my hand into splitting the code. At the moment though I'd have to say that we are better off working within the limitations of the app store and producing just one app where we can. As a user I'd be annoyed if I had to play twice. On Mar 25, 10:13 am, Moandji Ezana <[email protected]> wrote: > I was wondering if anyone had experience or thoughts on whether it's best > (from an ease of development point of view) to make separate tablet and > phone versions of an app, or bundle them into a single universal app. > > I guess Honeycomb's Fragments API would suggest universality, but Google > doesn't really seem to have its act together on porting Honeycomb to phones. > My main worry, though, is that having to constantly check both the form > factor and the OS version would lead to a complicated mess. > > With Maven, it might just be easier to build a common > data/background/networking artifact and have separate UI artifacts. Then > publish them as My App and My App XL. With the Android Market's filtering, > you could make sure phones only see the regular version and Honeycomb > tablets only see the XL version. > > Any thoughts? > > Moandji -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" 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/javaposse?hl=en.
