CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidlayoutandroid-fragmentstablet
Mariyan Marinov
Mariyan Marinov

Reputation: 45

tablet/handset layout structure with fragments

In this article http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/tablets-and-handsets.html we use res/layout/main.xml with one fragment for handsets and res/layout-large/main.xml with two fragments for tablets. We must check if second fragment is in the layout to define if app runs on tablet or on phone. I have 4 layout (2 for phone and 2 for tablet):

I check screen orientation to define if display is in portrait or landscape mode and check if layout contains a fragment to define if it is tablet or phone.

Is there any better way to work with layouts and fragments?

Is it possible to use one layout if we have two fragments for example https://i.sstatic.net/FtzKs.png and if a phone display doesn't fit both of them to show only the first one?

Thanks in advance! :)

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1004

Answers (1)

Ryan Chipman
Ryan Chipman

Reputation: 393

What you're showing there is indeed possible! That is something called a Master Detail Flow (if you're developing in Eclipse with adt, check out he new activity wizard, which provides this as a template option).

This layout is basically just two fragments inside an activity (or, now, as of android 4.2, they can be nested in another fragment as well!) that interact with each other in a certain way. To create the layouts you linked to, one would detect whether the device is a phone or a tablet, and then set the visibility of the two fragments in different situations accordingly.

You will find a number of methods for detecting screen size here, whether you want to use screen size in inches, pixels, or the manufacturers' default categories.

And properties like visibility and sizing can be set programmatically using Layout Params and its various subclasses.

In any particular case, whether you choose to use multiple layouts to support different screen sizes or to do more of it programmatically is up to you. Personally, I think that it is always a good practice to design your code modularly and then use layouts to put all the pieces together (it'll save you a lot of headaches down the line if you decide you want to change things up). But either way, supporting more devices will always require more code, and there are no two ways around that...one of the curses of android development :P

Upvotes: 1

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