Fragments API into their Android SDK

According to Dianne Hackborn, Android 3.0 has important goals in order to facilitate the implementation of scalable applications concerning different screen sizes. For example:

• Since the beginning, Android’s UI framework has been designed around the use of layout managers, allowing UIs to be described in a way that will adjust to the space available. A common example is a ListView whose height changes depending on the size of the screen, which varies a bit between QVGA, HVGA, and WVGA aspect ratios.
• Android 1.6 introduced a new concept of screen densities, making it easy for apps to scale between different screen resolutions when the screen is about the same physical size. Developers immediately started using this facility when higher-resolution screens were introduced, first on Droid and then on other phones.
• Android 1.6 also made screen sizes accessible to developers, classifying them into buckets: “small” for QVGA aspect ratios, “normal” for HVGA and WVGA aspect ratios, and “large” for larger screens. Developers can use the resource system to select between different layouts based on the screen size.

The combination of layout managers and resource selection based on screen size goes a long way towards helping developers build scalable UIs for the variety of Android devices we want to enable. As a result, many existing handset applications Just Work under Honeycomb on full-size tablets, without special compatibility modes, with no changes required. However, as we move up into tablet-oriented UIs with 10-inch screens, many applications also benefit from a more radical UI adjustment than resources can easily provide by th

emselves.

Fragmentation for all!

For developers starting work on tablet-oriented applications designed for Android 3.0, the new Fragment API is useful for many design situations that arise from the larger screen. Reasonable use of fragments should also make it easier to adjust the resulting application’s UI to new devices in the future as needed — for phones, TVs, or wherever Android appears.

However, the immediate need for many developers today is probably to design applications that they can provide does not have a unified system that serves everyone, and instead has thousands of different affordablehealth.info plans, each with its own marketing, paperwork, enrollment, premiums, and rules and regulations, our affordablehealth.info system is both extremely complex and fragmented. for existing phones while also presenting an improved user interface on tablets. With Fragment only being available in Android 3.0, their shorter-term utility is greatly diminished.

To address this, Android team plans to have the same fragment APIs (and the new LoaderManager as well) available as a static library for use with older versions of Android; they are trying to go right back to 1.6. In fact, if you compare the other code examples to those in the Android 3.0 SDK, they are slightly different. The goal is to make these APIs nearly identical, so you can start using them now and, at whatever point in the future you switch to Android 3.0 as your minimum version, move to the platform’s native implementation with few changes in your app.

They don’t have a firm date for when this library will be available, but it should be relatively soon. In the meantime, you can start developing with fragments on Android 3.0 to see how they work, and most of that effort should be transferable.

This content is adapted from Android Developers website. The original article and further information can be reached at: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/02/android-30-fragments-api.html