My screen size, in MIT App Inventor, is set to phone (320 x 505) and is significantly smaller than the actual screen on my Samsung GalaxyA03 phone. I have installed the 'getmetrics' extension and used it to retrieve the actual sizes of my phone screen. From reading about this topic I think the correct numbers are the DP numbers, so my WidthDP should be 360 and my HeightDP should be 729.5. I also note that my reported 'Density' is 2.
So my question has simplified itself to 'how do I change the screen size to 'phone (360 x 729.5)' in MIT App Inventor.
If you want to change the size of the screen in the Designer, you have three options, phone, tablet & monitor. You cannot set a custom size. Use the companion app to see what your project looks like on your phone. Use responsive sizing for best results on all devices.
I guess this is the answer that I needed to hear, but not what I hoped. I am already using 'responsive sizing' and have most sizes expressed in percentages, which works well on my actual phone. I also have two panels defined and can switch between those to implement a second 'virtual screen'. So far so good. I can also see my layout on my actual phone using 'AI Companion', so have managed to mostly fill my screen with components and am happy enough with what I have. But!!
How was I supposed to add the components to the bottom of the screen? My technique was to make some of the items at the top 'non visible' to allow me to add stuff down the bottom. Then make all components 'visible' again to be able to see 'everything' on my actual screen using 'AI companion'. Sure, it achieved the result, but it is all a bit messy and guessy for my liking.
But HEY! Happy New Year and isn't MIT App Inventor just the greatest thing since sliced bread. Btw I am using this to control an ESP32 based camera platform.
Set visiblity of components near the top of the screen
Use one of the larger screen sizes in the Designer
It can be more difficult if you want to add components "to the right". If that is the case, then you will need to unset visibility of components "on the left" to be able to see and work with the components out of view.
Thanks for the advice, I get it now. My verticalPD number is 730 so I need to choose the device with at least that. As it hapens, the 'monitor(768 X 1024)' is the only one that has sufficient screen height. Then the scroll bar on the screen allows me to scroll down to the bottom and add components as required. Moving right along, thanks again.
Ian.
I think it could be easy to implement but time consuming. We can't use real monitor pixels for this purpose because e.g. tablet view already does that. We would have to scale the size of mock components to be smaller, which would simulate higher screen density.
