Quick guide to the new app widget padding/margins in ICS / Android 4.0+ (backwards-compatibility & new issues)

April 14, 2012

1 min read

For those who don't know, Mike & I make a popular widget app for Android called HD Widgets. We've spent a lot of time resolving for Android UI fragmentation and have been mostly successful. (more…)

Comments

redwarp

April 25, 2012 at 6:00 am

Thanks dude, really useful.

One weird thing I noticed though, is that ICS margin measure appears only once : when you first set the widget.

Which means : if you update your widget, and that the previous version was compiled for android 10, and that you the next version is compiled for android 15, the margin are not re-measured on update, and your previous version will still have the old-style margin (ie : no margin at all).

Did you find a solution for this particular issue ?

Thanks in advance.

radley

April 25, 2012 at 10:32 am

No idea. I’d save that kind of change for a major update and tell users they need to reinstall the widget. I’d probably include a nice carrot to make it feel worth their while…

redwarp

April 25, 2012 at 11:05 am

Can’t do that, it’s a note widget ^^ (memento)
Well, I guess it’s not that important, only a few users will be impacted, and they might create new widgets on their own if they want.

I wanted the neat widget resize capability that comes with Honeycomb and ICS ! But only ICS adds the “minResizeWidth” and “minResizeHeight” params, so… I compiled against Android 15.

Anyway, thanks for the tip, I kind of feel bad I didn’t thought about it on my own.

radley

April 25, 2012 at 12:31 pm

It sounds like they’re sticky notes so they’re disposable. Old ones will be over-padded and will inevitably be replaced by normal ones. Don’t think you’ll get much complaints (particularly if you point out how/why it happens).

Of course there’s an opportunity here to add a carrot or two: back-up & reload notes, send via email, notification alarm…

redwarp

April 25, 2012 at 6:00 am

*happens, not *appears

mradlmaier

May 25, 2012 at 2:46 pm

I am a dveloper and I have developed a widget build against API 8, TargetSDK 8. Everything nice and fine so far. Recently I updated my SGS to ICS 4.03 and took the chance to test against ICS on a real device. As I am in the process of moving all my apps to ICS, I build against API 15 and with TargetSDK set to 15.
Now what happens, is that the widgets disappear from the new app/widget launcher???

If I build against API 8 with TargetSDK set to API 8, it will appear like all pre-ICS widgets in the launcher (with the thin frame around them) like expected…

In Eclipse I can see that 5 new parameters have been added:
PreviewImage, Auto advance view id, Resize mode, Min resize width, Min resize height.
I assume, to make the widget appear in the launcher, I have to specify some of these values?

BTW, I am using HD Widgets on my SGS and on my Acer Iconia tab since you published the first version, I am completely happy. No other clock/weather widget around which looks as good and is as configurable than your HD Widgets :) (And I tried all major clock/weather widgets). I especially love the transparent version which blends in so nicely, on whatver wallpaper is in use. Great work!

José

March 4, 2013 at 1:10 pm

Regarding app widgets disappearing from the launcher, take a look at my answer in SO: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9232692/android-widgets-not-showing-in-app-drawer-ics/10423158#10423158

radley

May 25, 2012 at 3:02 pm

Hard to say – I don’t think I’ve seen the problem start there (i.e. not showing up in the list). It’s got to be something in your Manifest or widget-info.

Toni

May 30, 2012 at 4:58 am

In fact there is another problem. The automatic padding from the ICS system shows up only with the default ICS launcher, but in SGS II with ICS and the embedded Samsung’s TouchWiz, the crappy Gingerbread-like launcher doesnt add any padding, so when you start the widget, the padding is taken from the values-v14 folder (its an ICS device indeed) but TouchWiz doesnt add any padding, so the end result is that the widget doesnt get any padding from anybody.

If you use another launcher, like the ICS only Apex Launcher (a really nice launcher, I think) the widget does get padded by the launcher, but only if the widget is built with v14/v15 target. If the widget is built for v10 (i.e.) it doesnt get padded either, but as the values are taken from values-v14 there is no padding from there either.

This is the kind of things that drives me crazy about developing for android :(

radley

May 30, 2012 at 12:58 pm

From what I’ve heard the idea was that we should let the launcher determine the size & layout. Unfortunately, Google & Samsung have extremely opposite design goals for widgets: Google wants thick gaps between and heavy padding resulting in very squished widgets, while Samsung is designing for full-screen sizes. Meanwhile, HTC is doing extra-large screens…

At this point I’m thinking I may need unique layouts just for the Galaxy Nexus since its gaps/spacing are so out of sync with everyone else and it’s easy to target a single device.

Naguz

June 5, 2012 at 1:28 pm

I have to questions for you if you would be so kin
1: Do I undertsand this correctly if I’m left with the impression that there is NOTHING any widget devs can do about it – Your widgets WILL have padding on ICS no matter what?
2: Is there something launcher devs can do? I have tried apex, nova and Adw EX, bot no margin settings in the launchers fixes this. If (the otherwise crappy) TouchWiz launcher can simply choose to ignore those margins, maybe there is hope. I have no use what so ever for 40% wasted screen real estate and miniature widgets.

Toni

June 10, 2012 at 4:29 am

For my widgets, after testing with quite a bunch of launchers and devices, the “solution” has been not to compile against ICS SDK, but use the android 3.2 SDK (v13). This way no padding is enforced at all and it all seems to work as intended in every device.

I think google should think a lot about this kind of decisions that ends up being a nuisance to developers, instead of making it all easier for us. But well, after all they are the ones that decided to implement an OS in crappy slow java to be run in devices with very limited memory and power, make the whole UI system a single threaded piece of $%&#, and disabled real multithreading in AsyncTasks in honeycomb “because people abused it” so its not a surprise to me anyway :(

And I dont forget their biggest achievement in OS development, optional API functionality. Every time I read in the docs “this flag/method/parameter may not have any effect, or not be implemented at all, so you can use it but sometimes it will work and sometimes it wont, but you cant query about it anyway”. Say what?

Oh, and BitmapFactory is the biggest piece of pure evil implemented in any system I ever developed on.

Wise up google!! Even the crappy extinct windows 95 with 1/4 the memory and CPU power of any of current low end device can give android a run for its money.

Oh mama….

radley

June 10, 2012 at 3:11 am

It’s actually a little worse than that: only certain devices enforce the padding. Aside from the Galaxy Nexus, Samsung disregards (i.e. removes) the padding. Same with HTC. But Motorola & Asus still use it… Turned our launch into quite the mess.

September 1, 2012 at 2:50 am

The method does not seem to work on many stock launchers?

I tested on:
Asus TF700 4.0.3: padding enforced no matter what
Iconia A500 4.0.3: padding also enforced
Galaxy Tab 2 4.0.3: no padding ;)
Galaxy S3 4.1.1 + Nova Launcher: no padding ;)
Galaxy Nexus 4.1.1 + Nova Launcher: no padding ;)

I added the dimens, the FrameLayout with a reference to that, added v14 versions of all widget info XMLs (for min sizes dp), but no luck!

Am I missing something???

No other solution but to stick with target SDK 13… But what then if I need SDK 15?!

radley

September 25, 2012 at 11:32 pm

The technique is only for bringing older devices into line with Google’s extra padding. There’s no way I know of to distinguish between different ICS/JB devices.

Eventually you’re going to need sdk14 or later. I posted this as a warning so everyone would know what to expect.

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Quick guide to the new app widget padding/margins in ICS / Android 4.0+ (backwards-compatibility & new issues)

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