Friday, May 24, 2013

Previewing Several Different Devices at the Same Time

I am beginning to develop an Android app using the early release of Android Studio (build from May 15, 2013), and noticed this very cool feature: you can see an image gallery of how a screen looks on multiple  devices.  Here's a screenshot for a little app:

Android Studio
Previewing Screen on Multiple Devices 

Synchronized with Changes to the Screen XML, too!
There are a staggering number of devices and screen sizes already defined:

Android Studio
Predefined Devices for Previewing Your Screens


You can have the window floating off to the side, switch orientations, etc.  I can see this saving a lot of time.

Just click on the screen xml file in your project to see the previews.  There are two modes: Design and Text.  I could get the Preview window to float only if I had the "Text" tab clicked - this lets you edit the xml directly.

Android Studio
Previewing via "Design" Tab
There's lots to play with here.  I haven't programmed natively for Android in a little while, and I'm looking forward to jumping back in.


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