How many different screen sizes does Android have, and why is this so hard for web devs?

The problem with Android? Let’s start with screen sizes and what programmers do with the size.

In the bad old days when I was creating layouts for Windows Apps (we used to call them programs…) we never assumed what size or shape the user’s screen was. Even if we had known the resolution, the user could have resized the window, scaled their fonts, or done any of a dozen things to change the layout.

Then when we started playing with the web – the rules were the same. Assume that your user was going to fiddle with their preferred CSS, or at the very least resize their window.

When did programmers get so lazy?

Terence Eden in the comments. Classy, accurate, incisive. What a shame comments aren’t shared as much as blog posts.