December 2011
1 post
Android DPI Calculator →
A simple, yet useful calculator for Android app designers that converts sizes between DPIs.
October 2011
1 post
Android: 9-patch resources
The most powerful tool when preparing graphics for Android is 9patch. But many people have problems understanding it, so let me try to clarify it.
9patch is essentially an image that can be stretched without distorting it. A typical example is a rounded rectangle (a typical contemporary button), where you don’t want the corners to be distorted by scaling and only want the middle parts to...
August 2011
2 posts
1 tag
July 2011
7 posts
3 tags
Android: New tools for managing screen sizes →
The dp unit described in detail; screen size selectors and more useful stuff on Android graphics directly from developers.
4 tags
Understanding Mobile Cache Sizes →
5 tags
Designing for Android: Densities
Once you have the layout ready, you proceed to drawing. In the drawing phase, the densities come into play.
The screen density by definition is the quantity of pixels within a physical area of a screen. It’s usually referred to as dpi (dots per inch). Android splits them into four ranges:
The painful thing about densities is that we have to prepare each element for every density.
...
3 tags
Seven Guidelines For Designing High-Performance... →
Intriguing article by Ivo Weevers.
3 tags
Golden ratio
I keep bumping into overcomplicated instructions to construct a layout based on golden ratio (such as this one). Although most of it looks cool and somewhat esoteric, it’s too much to do on a daily basis.
I use two simple formulas:
For example say your website is 960px wide:
960px × 0.618 ~= 593px for content column
960px × 0.382 ~= 367px for side column
6 tags
Designing for Android: Screens
It seems overwhelming when you consider that there are dozens of devices currently available with the Android OS, and even more are on the way. Each device has slightly different screen properties. But freak out not, we’re going to simplify it.
Let’s take a look at some Android devices and their properties:
For every screen, there are 3 important properties related to its...