IOS and Android
Quirks, Things to know
- Mobile device develop much more rapidly than desktop systems.
- There is much more variation in the marketplace.
- Parts of this presentation will no longer be valid in 6 months.
- HTML5 standards are being gradually adopted.
- You cannot assume all devices have all features.
- To check if an OS has a particular feature, check http://www.caniuse.com
iOS
- 75% of users are on iOS 7 (the latest) already
- Less than 5% are older than iOS 6.
- All devices made by Apple
Android
- 45% of users are in Android 4.x
- More than 50% are in Android 2.x
- Android 2.x devices are still being manufactured
- Two versions of the brower: Android Browser and Chrome.
- Android browser is no longer being developed.
- Chrome browser is much more advanced.
- Chrome browser only runs on Android 4+
- Devices are made by hundreds of manufacturers
- Since Android is open source, there is no standard on how Android is configured.
- Some manufacturers (Amazon, Samsung) put their own software on top of Android.
- As a result, Android devices have more quirks than iOS.
Dealing with different screen sizes
- Making apps which look good on all the devices they run on is hard.
Different screen sizes
- Physical screen sizes on phone devices run from 3.5 inches to more than 5
- The ratio of width to height is not always the same.
- For example, the iPhone 4 is 320x480, while the iPhone 5 is 320x568.
- Actually, since the iPhone 5 is a retina, it is 640x1136.
- Positions on retina devices are based on the 320x578.
- Text and images are drawn more precisely using the extra pixels.
- Use SysInfo(2) and SysInfo(3) to get the current width and height.
- It is usually correct.
- No method has been found yet that gets the correct width and height for all devices!
Orientation
- If you want to run your app in both portrait and landscape, you have to program this yourself.
- Simply scaling the controls will not work in most cases.
- You may even want to rethink the design for usability.
Tablets
- You cannot simply scale all the controls up in size.
- If you do, your app will look terrible.
- Consider using the extra space for more usability.
- For example, display two forms size by side.