Question

So I used the following code below to have my application to scale screen size on different android devices but when I am testing on my Nexus 7 its does not scale and its as if it was on a 4 inch screen. When I run it in the emulator on a 7 inch screen it works. Anything wrong with my manifest file?

<supports-screens 
android:resizeable="true"
android:smallScreens="true" 
android:largeScreens="true"
android:xlargeScreens="true"  
android:normalScreens="true" 
android:anyDensity="true"
/>

this code goes right before the “application” part right?

Answer 1

Ok, so what you have to know is that support-screens doesn’t make your application look ‘nice’ on screens you are supporting (check this link). It just tells that users with such screens will be able to download your application, but it’s up to you to make it display properly. You have to create layouts for specific screens on your own.

More about it you can read in Android’s documentation: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html

Basically, you have to properly name your directories in which layout files are stored in order to let Android know which one should it pick up for specific device. If for example your layout’s file was “layout.xml” you should have:

/res/layout/layout.xml         // Default layout
/res/layout-small/layout.xml   // Small screens
/res/layout-large/layout.xml   // Large screens
/res/layout-xlarge/layout.xml  // Extra large screens

You can go even further and make also different layouts for portrait and landscape views by specyfing another keyword in directory’s name:

/res/layout-small-land/layout.xml      // Small screens, landscape view
/res/layout-small-portrait/layout.xml  // Small screens, portrait view

Remember that tags order is important, so you can’t write layout-portrait-small.