Screen orientation

Detecting screen orientation changes with the mobile device.

Designing forms adapting to mobile screen orientation

With Responsive Layout features, app forms can adapt to the screen orientation of a mobile device, by using specific form attributes such as HBOX attribute ORIENTATION@SMALL=VERTICAL.

On mobile devices with a small screen (classical smartphones), the portrait mode is consisdered as a SMALL screen, and landscape mode is considered as MEDIUM screen. On a typical tablet, portrait mode will be considered as a MEDIUM screen, while landscape mode is LARGE.

For more details about available form attributes, see Responsive Layout.

Controlling screen orientation on GMA / Android

Use the allowedOrientations Window style attribute, to control screen orientation options on Android devices:

<Style name="Window.main">
  <StyleAttribute name="allowedOrientations" value="portrait_reverse" />
</Style>

For the complete list of possible values, see allowedOrientations style attribute.

Controlling screen orientation on GMI / iOS

On iOS devices using GMI, the screen orientation possibilities must be defined in the Info.plist resource file. Keys such as UISupportedInterfaceOrientations must be defined in the file, for example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding= "UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC  "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd" >
<plist version= "1.0">
<dict>
        <key>UISupportedInterfaceOrientations</key>
        <array>
                <string>UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait</string>
                <string>UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown</string>
        </array>
        <key>UISupportedInterfaceOrientations~ipad</key>
        <array>
                <string>UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait</string>
                <string>UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown</string>
        </array>
</dict>
</plist>

For more details about Info.plist usage, see the section about defining iOS app properties in Info.plist.