Using attributes from API level beyond minSdkVersion

Question

I am new to Android development and am wondering what happens if you use attributes on XML tags from an API level greater than your minSdkVersion.

For example having:

Answer 1

For XML attributes, its safe to use attributes from newer APIs (they will simply be ignored as the XML parser won't even look for them on older versions).

Answer 2

In this case, the manipulation of attributes that are different APIs must be made via code and not in XML.

In code, you can treat it.

For example:

 if(Build.Version.SDK_INT > 10){

     .... use an attribute

   }
else{

    .... use other
}

For your specific case, use "icon"

<activity android:icon="@drawable/iconwhatever"></activity>

Answer 3

Unsupported attributes are safely ignored.

From SDK documentation:

When parsing XML resources, Android ignores XML attributes that aren’t supported by the current device. So you can safely use XML attributes that are only supported by newer versions without worrying about older versions breaking when they encounter that code.