Building for Froyo, Styling for ICS

Question

I'm planning on writing an app and building against 2.2 Froyo (API Level 8). However, I want app users of 4.0 ICS to experience the app with the ICS user interface.

Currently my approach is to have the default activity of my app sense the version of the Android device.

If it is less than 4.0, use XML views written for Gingerbread and Froyo and, if it's 4.0 or higher to use ICS XML views. This however seems a bit haphazard and I'm not sure I can manage the separation of version views effectively.

What approaches, tools, and ideas can I use to help me make my app? Is it even something I need to consider? Is my idea of the view separation above correct? Do I have alternatives I could use instead?

Cheers!

Answer 1

If you just want to apply different resources for different OS version, you can let system do it for you by putting your resources into different resource folders with the "v" qualifer. Such as "layout-v8" folder for layouts used for Froyo and "layout-v14" for layouts used for ICS. I did not try this but from the document, that's what it supposes to do.

Answer 2

The Crunchyroll app (an anime viewer) has separate activities and layouts for Froyo vs. Honeycomb/Google TV, defaults to one or the other on initial startup, and thereafter allows the user to declare a preference for one or the other. I'm not affiliated with CR, but I use and have studied the app. One problem the app has, which may be encouraged by the level of separation it has between the two targets, is that the pre-Honeycomb interface has many features, and continues to receive updates, that the tablet/TV interface is only promised.

As for tools, you can use later features while targeting an earlier OS with the SDK's support package, which backports features (e.g., fragments) appropriately.