Android Tablet PC design: Tablet layout strategy

Layout strategy of tablet computer

Using fragmentation and multiple pane views

The building blocks of the honeycomb design are "fragments." Fragmentation is the layout component of a self-contained system that can change its size and placement depending on the direction and size of the screen. A further solution to design this problem for a variety of size skins is to give designers and developers a way to make their screen layout components flexible and stacked, depending on the device screen restrictions that run the application. Screen components can be stretched, stacked, expanded, or shrunk, displayed, or hidden.

The fragmentation architecture gives designers and developers several options to maintain their layouts across a wide variety of screen sizes and orientations.

What makes the pieces so special? Through the compatibility library, developers can bring this functionality to Android smartphones above 1.6, enabling them to create applications using a strategy that is sized to fit multiple devices. In short, it enables designers and developers to develop only one application and fit all the specs of the device.

While fragmentation may be a more term used by developers, designers should still have a basic understanding of how compressed content can be stretched, stacked, expanded, and hidden.

The most common form of fragmentation is split view. This layout is common in news applications and e-mail clients, where the list is usually rendered in a narrower column, and the details view is presented in a wider column.

Split view used by USA today

Another way to render a split view is to change direction on one side of it. In this case, the side of the list fragment becomes a carousel, which supports horizontal navigation instead of vertically.

Direction strategy

Fragmentation is a good way to apply a design to multiple screen sizes and is also useful for setting direction strategies. Your screen design may look good in a landscape view, but what do you do when you're faced with a narrow vertical view that contains three columns? You can choose to stretch, stack, or hide the content again. You can think of fragments as a bunch of stretching puzzles that you can move around, shape or delete as needed.

About animations

The honeycomb architecture allows designers and developers to use colorful animation effects. Based on the Android 3.0 Essentials page, "Animations can create fade effects, move between different states, loop through a dynamic picture, or exit animations, change colors, and more." "Honeycomb also has a high-performance mechanism for displaying 2D or 3D images. For a better understanding of the overall performance of honeycomb, look at this video.

Learn from the examples

Android tablets are still a relatively new area, with some brands just beginning to test water. Here is a series of applications that are collected to inspire inspiration. You can download any of these from Android Market or Amazon.

Youtube

Of course, Google's YouTube app on the Honeycomb platform is exemplary, showcasing all the design styles and user interface elements discussed above. For a better experience honeycomb, download the app and run it first.

Cnn

CNN Apps use Touch gestures (including sliding to browse for more), split views, and fonts! A custom font (Rockwell) is applied to news headlines.