title: Please explain gradle dependancies vs min build sdk
body: <p>Android beginner here...</p>
  
  <p>I'm getting all sort of rendering errors, and eventually concluded it's got something to do with my gradle dependencies. </p>
  
  <p>Now I found a nice tutorial which I've been following, <a href="http://www.android4devs.com/2015/06/navigation-view-material-design-support.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.android4devs.com/2015/06/navigation-view-material-design-support.html</a> but I'm running to a problem extending it further, and there is something I don't think I understand. </p>
  
  <p>Should I not be using the latest stable version of any library I can? Surely these libraries are backwards compatible?</p>
  
  <p>If I am supposed to use the older version of library, to match the compile sdk (which I understand to mean I'm compiling for backwards compatibility, and supporting, say, lollipop API 21-22) then:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>I would need a place to see a complete list of all versions of all libraries (which I cannot find), and </li>
  <li>I would not be able to use new features like RecyclerView which only came in at Marshmallow API 23. </li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Am I missing something? </p>
  
  <p><strong>build.gradle (module app)</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>apply plugin: 'com.android.application'
  
  android {
      compileSdkVersion 22
      buildToolsVersion '25.0.0'
  
      defaultConfig {
          applicationId "com.example.myFirstApp"
          minSdkVersion 15
          targetSdkVersion 22
          versionCode 1
  ...
  ...
  
  dependencies {
      compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
      compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:26.1.0'
      compile 'com.android.support:design:26.1.0'
      compile 'de.hdodenhof:circleimageview:1.3.0'
      compile 'com.intuit.sdp:sdp-android:1.0.3'
      compile 'com.android.support:cardview-v7:26.1.0'
      compile 'com.android.support:recyclerview-v7:26.1.0'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>Error message</strong> </p>
  
  <p>The support library should not use a different version (26) than the compile sdk version (22). </p>