Android: how to the design app for Smartphone AND Tablet?

Question

I know there are already quite a lot of blog entries, how to's, questions out there that cover backward compatibility of Android 3.0 apps.

However, after reading them all I'm just more confused than before. :(

What I have is a Smartphone app that supports min. SDK version 8 (2.2).

I now want this one to stay the same on Smartphones, but also provide a fancy version on Honeycomb Tablets with Action Bar and Fragments and so on.

I know there is the compatibility pack, but all I read about it was about Fragments. What's with the Action Bar and the holographic Theme? I did get this pretty nice and easy just by changing the targetSdkVersion to "11" on my Tablet. How could I reach this with the compatibility pack?

Or would you say it's better to develop two different versions of the program? (And maybe merge them together later?)

Kind regards, jellyfish

Answer 1

Keep one apk and just use alternative resources for your Tablet.

Take a look at:

http://code.google.com/p/iosched/source/browse/#hg%2Fandroid%2Fres

This show's you the directory structure of how to target SmartPhones and Tablets (with honeycomb) in the same APK.

EDIT

fancy version on Honeycomb

using Fragments won't change your UI in honeycomb it's just a way to re-use code. So you don't need Fragments to make your UI 'fancy'

EDIT 2

To find the current running Android version you can do something like

int b = Integer.parseInt(Build.VERSION.SDK);              
if(b >= Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB){
      Log.i(TAG, "Found A Tablet Running Honeycomb or newer");                  
 }

EDIT 3

in your Activity call getActionBar(); you then have access to all action bar methods stated here: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/ActionBar.html

Answer 2

There was a talk on this very subject at Google IO this year. Now available on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGIU2JX1U5Y&feature=youtube_gdata_player