Book Image

Android 3.0 Application Development Cookbook

By : Kyle Merrifield Mew
Book Image

Android 3.0 Application Development Cookbook

By: Kyle Merrifield Mew

Overview of this book

<p>Android is a mobile operating system that runs on a staggering number of smartphones and tablets. Android offers developers the ability to build extremely rich and innovative applications written using the Java programming language. Among the number of books that have been published on the topic, what&rsquo;s missing is a thoroughly practical, hands-on book that takes you straight to getting your job done without boring you with too much theory.<br /><br />Android 3.0 Application Development Cookbook will take you straight to the information you need to get your applications up and running. This book is written to provide you with the shortest possible route between an idea and a working application. <br /><br />Work through the book from start to finish to become an Android expert, or use it as a reference book by applying recipes directly to your project.<br /><br />This book covers every aspect of mobile app development, starting with major application components and screen layout and design, before moving on to how to manage sensors such as internal gyroscopes and near field communications. Towards the end, it delves into smartphone multimedia capabilities as well as graphics and animation, web access, and GPS. <br /><br />Whether you are writing your first app or your hundredth, this is a book that you will come back to time and time again, with its many tips and tricks on the rich features of Android 3.</p>
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Android 3.0 Application Development Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Optimizing for tablets and multiple screens


Android can be (and is) installed on many devices and our applications can end up running on a wide variety of screen resolutions and range of pixel densities. Although the system generally scales applications to fit most situations rather well, there are nevertheless times when an application does not appear as we might wish. Differing pixel densities mean that screen elements can be larger or smaller than we might like depending on the handset they are running on.

Naturally we want our applications to run on as many devices as we can, but we do not want them installed on devices where the screen size makes them unusable. Fortunately, Android provides a way for us to not only ensure that our applications look how we want on any targeted screen configuration, but also make sure that they will not even be available to users with handsets that would not do our application justice.

In this recipe we will configure an application using the <supports...