Maintain screen dimensions across Android devices.

Android Processing

danieljay

Maintain screen dimensions across Android devices.

in Android Processing • 24 days ago

Greetings!

So I am developing an application for Android and had a question pertaining to maintaining the scaling across devices.

My current approach is using the displayWidth/Height objects and multiplying accordingly depending on my means. example,

class TRAIN{
////train movements/////
//ADD : SOUND, SMOKE, LIGHT
float xpos, ypos; // Starting position of shape
float xspeed = 15; // Speed of the shape
//////////////////////////
TRAIN(){
xpos = displayWidth*1.92;
ypos = displayHeight/2.3;
}
void display(){
xpos = xpos - xspeed ;
if (xpos < displayWidth-displayWidth*2.6) {
xpos = displayWidth*1.92;
}
train.resize(500, 130);
image(train,xpos--, ypos);
g.removeCache(train);
if(xpos <= 1800 && xpos > -200){
player.start();
}
println(xpos);
}
}

Is this an effective approach to maintain proportional scaling across Android devices?

Replies(2)

dimkir

Re: Maintain screen dimensions across Android devices.

24 days ago

That's acceptable approach if you're targeting screen sizes which are more or less the same.

Eg. if you have Samsung Galaxy S2 or Galaxy S3 (a bit bigger screen) then this approach will yield descent results. Because screen sizes differ not too much.

But if your app would be used on 7" or 11" tablet, then your images will be strecthed and may become ugly.

Another extreme situation is: if someone runs your sketch on Google TV (which may have really hi resolutions).

And yet another extreme is when your sketch is run on a device with super small screen like 3" (Android watch or some cheaper older phone models).

So in those cases: you have to design almost "three different versions" of the app.

For the normal phone size: you have 1st set of images you will use

For the tablet size: you must have 2nd set of the same images but at higher resolution.

For the google TV: you must have 3rd set of images at super-high resolution.

You also need to decide what's going to be visible on the screen in the 3 abovementined situations:

eg. in Angry Birds: on small phone you only see slingshot . on Tablet you see slingshot and most of the room. On TV you will see ALL of the room and as well maybe some additional details or menus or sidebars.

But the bottom line: you have to think and design your app for every "size group" of the device separately. Unfortunately (or fortunately) it's not 1996 anymore where all screens had resolution either 640x480 or 800x600 :p

danieljay

Re: Maintain screen dimensions across Android devices.

23 days ago

I guess I have some concerns then in my code;

I am working on a nexus 7 which has 1920x1080 res, and obviously for the smaller res devices, this shouldnt be an issue;

But I am questioning my math (curse my mental math block I am trying to overcome!) in parts of my code like so:

image(house, displayWidth*0.02, displayHeight/21);

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