The Kindle Fire 1st generation has a 20px menu bar at the bottom of the screen when playing games that needs to be compensated for to avoid objects getting behind it.
Does anybody know anything about the new Kindle Fire devices:
Kindle Fire (2nd generation)
Kindle Fire HD
Kindle Fire HD 8.9"
Do they also have a menu bar that needs to be compensated for?
[import]uid: 70847 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 333911[/import]
I did a quick check on Goggle and didn’t find any thing. Let me see if the team knows anything about it. I would presume they are going to scale up to maintain their relative height. [import]uid: 199310 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 134916[/import]
Thanks! It would be good to know.
It would be best if I got these devices myself, but I’m located in Korea, and Amazon doesn’t officially sell their devices here. There is of course a grey-market, but can be rather pricey.
I’ve done some searches on Youtube to see if I could find anything conclusive, but still not sure about the issue. Even if there is a menu bar it all depends on if it’s reported by the OS in the total screen size or not.
I have a Google Nexus 7, and although there’s a fixed “button-bar” at the bottom, it’s not reported as part of the screen-size so it doesn’t present a problem.
I would love to able to run Corona APK’s in the Kindle Fire emulators that Amazon provide for Android, but that’s been a no-go for me. I just can’t get it to work. I know that the performance in the emulators are crap, so I can’t *play* the games, but I’m just interested in seeing if my graphics scale properly on the devices and don’t fall behind hidden menu bars or the like.
If you have any info if it’s possible to at least get the APK’s up and running on Amazon’s KF emulators, I’d be ecstatic 
[import]uid: 70847 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 134921[/import]
I have a Kindle Fire HD (7-inch). There are two bars, one narrower one with device info such as time, wifi signal and battery life, and one thicker one which contains Home, Back, Search, Favourites etc. These will cover up anything behind them, however these bars will disappear during gameplay. They are replaced by a very small tab (similar to the notifications tab on iOS) which when pressed will bring the devices info and menu buttons back up. So I don’t think you will have anything to worry about unless for some reason you want the device info to stay visible during gameplay. The little tab is not very intrusive at all. It’s quite an elegant system.
Let me know if you do need more specific info. [import]uid: 109535 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 134923[/import]
@arlenraisbeck Thanks a lot for the info! That’s what I was hoping for.
If I’m not mistaken, all newer KF’s run an modified version of ICS. Anyway, I’ve more or less decided that I’m going to invest in a KF HD 7 myself, since I’m selling on the Amazon store and want to be certain that my apps behave as expected on these devices. [import]uid: 70847 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 134924[/import]
They are very nice devices. I highly recommend them. Smooth and well built. It is a shame they won’t access the Amazon app store in most countries though. I’m from Australia so we share similar limitations. It’s a great device to develop for though. [import]uid: 109535 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 134926[/import]
You can find this information on Amazon’s website here…
https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/fire/specifications.html
Unfortunately, the pixel heights for both the status bar and navigation bar are wrong… or they’re not in pixels and need to be converted, even though “px” suggests pixels. I remember trying multiplying Amazon’s documented values against the screen density and it was still wrong.
In any case, I can look into this. We do provide a [lua]display.statusBarHeight[/lua] API that provides the pixel height of the “top” status bar. I know that it returns the wrong values for the 2nd generation Kindle Fires and needs to be updated.
If you have these devices, then a simple method for finding out the pixels heights for yourself is to take a screenshot via the Android SDK’s “ddms” tool. Then you can count the pixels for yourself via a photo editor.
[import]uid: 32256 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 135003[/import]
Everyone,
We’ve just measured the pixel height of the top status bar and bottom navigation bar for ourselves on all Kindle Fire device models except for the 2nd generation Kindle Fire. Please see the results below. Also, note that the bottom navigation bar is not fully “hidden” on the 1st generation Kindle Fire when hiding the top status bar in your code.
Kindle Fire (1st Generation):
Kindle Fire (2nd Generation):
Kindle Fire HD 7":
Kindle Fire HD 8.9":
So, I have to retract my claim that most of Amazon’s pixel heights were wrong. Only the 1st gen Kindle Fire status bar height is documented wrong on Amazon’s website. It is definitely 40 pixels high.
We’re going to modify Corona’s [lua]display.statusBarHeight[/lua] today to make sure it returns the correct pixel height for all of the Kindle Fire HD models. This change will be made available in tomorrow’s daily build.
Also, note that our [lua]display.statusBarHeight[/lua] returns the height in pixels and not in Corona’s content coordinates. So, if your app is using dynamic content scaling (ie: letterbox or zoomEven), then you’ll need to convert this height as follows:
[lua]local statusBarHeight = display.statusBarHeight * display.contentScaleY[/lua]
[import]uid: 32256 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 135042[/import]
I did a quick check on Goggle and didn’t find any thing. Let me see if the team knows anything about it. I would presume they are going to scale up to maintain their relative height. [import]uid: 199310 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 134916[/import]
Thanks! It would be good to know.
It would be best if I got these devices myself, but I’m located in Korea, and Amazon doesn’t officially sell their devices here. There is of course a grey-market, but can be rather pricey.
I’ve done some searches on Youtube to see if I could find anything conclusive, but still not sure about the issue. Even if there is a menu bar it all depends on if it’s reported by the OS in the total screen size or not.
I have a Google Nexus 7, and although there’s a fixed “button-bar” at the bottom, it’s not reported as part of the screen-size so it doesn’t present a problem.
I would love to able to run Corona APK’s in the Kindle Fire emulators that Amazon provide for Android, but that’s been a no-go for me. I just can’t get it to work. I know that the performance in the emulators are crap, so I can’t *play* the games, but I’m just interested in seeing if my graphics scale properly on the devices and don’t fall behind hidden menu bars or the like.
If you have any info if it’s possible to at least get the APK’s up and running on Amazon’s KF emulators, I’d be ecstatic
[import]uid: 70847 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 134921[/import]
I have a Kindle Fire HD (7-inch). There are two bars, one narrower one with device info such as time, wifi signal and battery life, and one thicker one which contains Home, Back, Search, Favourites etc. These will cover up anything behind them, however these bars will disappear during gameplay. They are replaced by a very small tab (similar to the notifications tab on iOS) which when pressed will bring the devices info and menu buttons back up. So I don’t think you will have anything to worry about unless for some reason you want the device info to stay visible during gameplay. The little tab is not very intrusive at all. It’s quite an elegant system.
Let me know if you do need more specific info. [import]uid: 109535 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 134923[/import]
@arlenraisbeck Thanks a lot for the info! That’s what I was hoping for.
If I’m not mistaken, all newer KF’s run an modified version of ICS. Anyway, I’ve more or less decided that I’m going to invest in a KF HD 7 myself, since I’m selling on the Amazon store and want to be certain that my apps behave as expected on these devices. [import]uid: 70847 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 134924[/import]
They are very nice devices. I highly recommend them. Smooth and well built. It is a shame they won’t access the Amazon app store in most countries though. I’m from Australia so we share similar limitations. It’s a great device to develop for though. [import]uid: 109535 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 134926[/import]
You can find this information on Amazon’s website here…
https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/fire/specifications.html
Unfortunately, the pixel heights for both the status bar and navigation bar are wrong… or they’re not in pixels and need to be converted, even though “px” suggests pixels. I remember trying multiplying Amazon’s documented values against the screen density and it was still wrong.
In any case, I can look into this. We do provide a [lua]display.statusBarHeight[/lua] API that provides the pixel height of the “top” status bar. I know that it returns the wrong values for the 2nd generation Kindle Fires and needs to be updated.
If you have these devices, then a simple method for finding out the pixels heights for yourself is to take a screenshot via the Android SDK’s “ddms” tool. Then you can count the pixels for yourself via a photo editor.
[import]uid: 32256 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 135003[/import]
Everyone,
We’ve just measured the pixel height of the top status bar and bottom navigation bar for ourselves on all Kindle Fire device models except for the 2nd generation Kindle Fire. Please see the results below. Also, note that the bottom navigation bar is not fully “hidden” on the 1st generation Kindle Fire when hiding the top status bar in your code.
Kindle Fire (1st Generation):
Kindle Fire (2nd Generation):
Kindle Fire HD 7":
Kindle Fire HD 8.9":
So, I have to retract my claim that most of Amazon’s pixel heights were wrong. Only the 1st gen Kindle Fire status bar height is documented wrong on Amazon’s website. It is definitely 40 pixels high.
We’re going to modify Corona’s [lua]display.statusBarHeight[/lua] today to make sure it returns the correct pixel height for all of the Kindle Fire HD models. This change will be made available in tomorrow’s daily build.
Also, note that our [lua]display.statusBarHeight[/lua] returns the height in pixels and not in Corona’s content coordinates. So, if your app is using dynamic content scaling (ie: letterbox or zoomEven), then you’ll need to convert this height as follows:
[lua]local statusBarHeight = display.statusBarHeight * display.contentScaleY[/lua]
[import]uid: 32256 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 135042[/import]
I just installed the latest daily build (1008) and when you switch to View As… Kindle Fire 7" or 8.9" in the Simulator you still get a statusBarHeight of 20 pixels. According to the above information we should be getting 0, correct? [import]uid: 120686 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 139772[/import]
The Corona Simulator does not support Android status bars and wrongly returns the iPhone’s status bar height instead. Actually, the Corona Simulator returns the wrong status bar height for iOS retina devices too. It’s an outstanding bug that we’re looking into addressing now.
In the meantime, rest assured that [lua]display.getStatusBarHeight()[/lua] does return the correct height on an Android device. I’ve confirmed this for myself. [import]uid: 32256 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 139781[/import]
I just installed the latest daily build (1008) and when you switch to View As… Kindle Fire 7" or 8.9" in the Simulator you still get a statusBarHeight of 20 pixels. According to the above information we should be getting 0, correct? [import]uid: 120686 topic_id: 33911 reply_id: 139772[/import]