Question

I’d like to know what is the best way to use shared preferences for application settings, namely to change text size and text colour. The tutorials I am finding are all confusing and most of them are using deprecated methods. What is the best way to proceed for API 17?

Answer 1

Create a preferences screen using this so your users have a place to change values. In your code, check the value of the keys you used in this preference screen and do whatever you need to do.

By the way, the example in the Android doc I linked shows hard-coded key string literals. The best practice way to do this is to create string keys in strings.xml resource file and reference the string key in your preference screen xml file and in your java code.

For example, in strings.xml:

<string name="wifiEnabled">wifi enabled</string>

In you preference screen xml file:

<CheckBoxPreference
            android:key="@string/wifiEnabled"
            android:title="WiFi" />

In your java code:

String wifiEnabledStringKey = getString(R.string.wifiEnabled);
//this will give you just 'wifi enabled'; you can then use this to retrieve the value of this key from SharedPreferences.