Apps App scaling - different devices, different reso

[EnterpriseD]

Hello,
I am developing a Calendar application, (I am not a programmer), I am hiring one on Freelancer. I have been discussing with him this "App Scaling issue" (how the App will be scaled / resized for different devices, with different resolutions) for a month already, yet I am not any closer understanding it. The Freelancer is absolutely unable to explain it to me.

1/ At the beginning he asked me to provide the graphical look of all the App screens in 720 x 1280, explaining that he will start from there and that Android OS has it's own resizing system, which will be used to handle this. But he never explained to me how exactly the App will look in any different resolution. I need to know what will happen with the App's graphics when it is displayed in different resolution, in order to have things under control...

2/ And today, he sent to me an absolutely impossible question (which I understand he should solve) : "The new Android devices are getting bigger resolutions like 1080 x 1920, how do we handle these?"

A/ Can you please bring some light into this issue for me? Explain how this works, and what basic materials and/or graphics should I deliver to the programmer (freelancer), so he is able to make the App, the same way as the other apps are made?
B/ Should I be solving this or is this completely "programming" issue and the programmer is just incompetent and stupid?

Thank you for helping me.
Anthony

 

[jmg129]

1) 720 x 1280 is probably not the best resolution to work with right now. Layout designs should probably be made in 4k resolutions (xxxhdpi) for future-proofing. Standard size on most android phones now are about 1080p (xxhdpi), though it is increasing. Android does in fact resize these graphics if resolution is lower than that (ie. 720 x 1280 - xhdpi), however that might get cpu intensive and not fully controllable. Developers usually create multiple sizes for each graphic to accommodate each of the standard android resolutions (xxhdpi, xxhdpi, xhdpi, hdpi, mdpi, ldpi).

2) Like I said above, working with higher resolutions is key. If your designs and graphics are done with vectors, making them bigger should be simple to do without quality loss.

Personally my design workflow goes something like this:
1) Create a 4k resolution workspace in photoshop and design how i want the final app to look - layouts, buttons, graphics etc..
2) Slice the buttons and graphics and export them
3) Generate different sizes for each button using a image resizer program
4) Put these images in the correct directories for use in the app workspace

Hope I helped clear things up a bit more.

 

[EnterpriseD]

Thank you. It is more clear to me now. This is my first App and I am simply a bit struggling to find out how things are done. Also, it is very hard to find good freelancers out there.

 

[GeorgeN]

Generally it is an issue for whoever is doing your UI/UX design (usually not the programmer - good design is really hard and programmers are generally about as good at it as a UX designer is at programming).

You probably need to do a little more than just provide images at different resolutions - the entire application layout should change depending on the screen it is running on.

It is important to think about any text and UI controls (buttons etc.) in your application, they should remain about the same physical size regardless of the screen you are running on. You don't want your text and buttons to suddenly become huge when you are running on a tablet. For example you could have both a phone and a tablet with exactly the same resolution screen - but one is a 5 inch screen the other 10 inches. Your UI shouldn't look exactly the same on both screens - each line of text should take up fewer pixels on the tablet as each pixel is physically bigger.

Google have some information here: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html

Jmg129's advice to work with vector graphics and then rasterize them at various different resolutions is good.

 

[EnterpriseD]

Thank you ! You are very helpful !