My application uses tabs and it is built on top of SDK Level 3 (Android 1.5).
Google mentions that tab icons “changed drastically” in Android 2.0, so they recommend making two sets of icons, one for < level 5 and another for >= level 5, and set the android:targetSdkVersion to 5 in the application manifest (see http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/icon_design_tab.html). BUT this attribute was introduced in API Level 4, so there is no way to declare it because I’m on API Level 3 (see http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/uses-sdk-element.html#target).
What’s the proper way to handle this case?
After developing the code at level 3 (to guarantee that you aren’t using APIs that were introduced later), change the target level to 5 or higher and patch up the manifest. Code compiled for more recent targets will run on level 3 devices as long as the code only uses level 3 API calls. You can also add resource folders with “-v5” in the name to put the level >= 5 icons.