Develop Reference

Android add border to button without losing material theme (using drawable)

I have a simple button
<Button
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:id="#+id/add"
android:backgroundTint="#color/add_bg"
android:textColor="#color/add_fg"
<!--android:borderColor?="#color/button_border"-->
android:text="#string/add"/>
I would like to have white background, blue text and blue border around. I am aware that I can achieve that through a drawable as shown here and in numerous other places. However I have observed that if you add a drawable to the button then it will lose all of its material properties (such as shadow and also upon clicking having the fancy ripple animation). So how would I add a border around the button without losing the material theme animations (shadow and tipple animation on click)?

Most of the items that android comes with are simply a pre-packaged set of attributes.
It would be almost impossible to expect the Android API developers to include a pre-packaged set of attributes for every possible color/border combination, but there is always a solution!
Unfortunately,as you mentioned, the solution does reside in creating your own custom XML file which can often be intimidating until you get the hang of it. Once you do, you too will marvel at the flexibility it allows.
Specifically for your situation, there are two options...
1) Create a custom XML border drawable.
2)under your buttons background property set your new custom border drawable
3)then also set the ripple effect under your buttons xml properties by adding:
android:foreground="?attr/selectableItemBackground"
android:clickable="true"
android:focusable="true"
----OR----
A more complex way is to make a drawable like the one below. This will add the "ripple" button effect as well as a custom shadow, button color, and border color!
"For anybody reading this later that may be less experienced)
1)In your project view go to res/drawable
2)right click the folder itself and select new/drawable resource file
3)Enter a file name my_ripple_button.xml(the root doesn't really matter because you wil replace it with the below code)
4)Click on the text tab if you aren't already there
5)select all text and basically replace with the following: (creating a custom color border is basically the same steps)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ripple xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:color="#color/colorPrimaryDark">
<item android:id="#android:id/ripple">
<shape android:shape="rectangle">
<solid android:color="#color/colorPrimaryDark" />
<corners android:radius="#dimen/button_radius_large" />
</shape>
</item>
<item android:id="#android:id/background">
<shape android:shape="rectangle">
<gradient
android:angle="90"
android:endColor="#color/colorPrimaryLight"
android:startColor="#color/colorPrimary"
android:type="linear" />
<corners android:radius="#dimen/button_radius_large" />
</shape>
</item>
</ripple>

Remove the top and bottom padding in a SeekBar

I am trying make a simple music player. When I try to use the android's default seek bar in my music playback controls section, there is a default padding at the top and bottom of the seekbar. The effect I am trying to achieve is similar to the seekbar used in shuttle music player.
But this the effect I'm getting. I would be grateful if any would tell me how to achieve the desired result.I'm using linear layout as the root container.

Because the option of specifying
android:background="#color/your_colour"
will not work because you have two colors there one for the Top and one for the Bottom.
The working solution is by using a layerlist as follows:
Go to your drawable folder create a file call it lets say
back_ground_seek_bar.xml and add the following code inside it:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >
<item android:bottom="10dp">
<shape android:shape="rectangle" >
<size android:height="10dp" />
<solid android:color="#colour/your_top_color" />
</shape>
</item>
<item android:top="10dp">
<shape android:shape="rectangle" >
<size android:height="10dp" />
<solid android:color="#color/your_bottom_color" />
</shape>
</item>
</layer-list>
Replace the colours with your own colors when you paste this.
Remember we have added top and height of as 10.But because we want our SeekBar to have colour then we have to set the height of seekbar to twice the value so It should be twice and thats 20dp. So we should add our new height of the seekbar to be 20dp as well set the background as the xml we have defined as follows. Go to your SeekBar and paste this:
android:layout_height="20dp"
android:background="#drawable/back_ground_seek_bar"
For customization you can also change the values of height and whatsoever in the drawable/back_ground_seek_bar.xml but it should always be twice. The given height set in SeekBaraim is to divide it equally.

Android - button background color shrinks the height of the button

I have this button
<Button
android:id="#+id/learn"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:layout_marginTop ="5dp"
android:text="Hello StackOverflow"
style="#style/home_page_buttons"
/>
and I am trying to give it this style
<style name="home_page_buttons">
<item name="android:layout_marginLeft">15dp</item>
<item name="android:layout_marginRight">15dp</item>
<item name="android:textColor">#color/light_best_blue</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">bold</item>
<item name="android:color">#color/white</item>
<item name="android:background">#color/white</item>
</style>
This line:
<item name="android:background">#color/white</item>
makes the backgrond white as I wanted, but for some reason, it shrinks down the height of the button and makes it ugly.
Any idea why that happens and how to stop this side effect?
Thanks!

ABDOU is right, this could be a solution for you
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:shape="rectangle">
<gradient android:startColor="#FFFFFF" android:endColor="#BBBBBB"
android:angle="270"/>
<stroke android:width="2dp"
android:color="#555555" />
<corners android:bottomRightRadius="7dp"
android:bottomLeftRadius="5dp"
android:topLeftRadius="5dp"
android:topRightRadius="7dp"/>
</shape>
Create this as XML in drawable, and set this to your BackgoundColor

The default button has a fixed minimum height, which is equal to the height of the underlying image. Here, since you are using a color, it has no minimum height. So, it takes up the height of the text. For your case, you will have to fix the height of your buttons.
A better way is to use custom button images.

when you make style="#style/home_page_buttons" you change the default style of the android button
if you want keep it, just make a background image for your button

I do not know if this is version dependent or due to any recent changes Since I have a very recent version of Android Studio, but I seem to have at least some degree of success restoring the extra space by specifying the Padding attribute.
Simply by adding this attribute:
android:padding="5dp"
The Button will regain most of that space it lost. I Recommend tuning the number, or possibly splitting the Attribute up into its 4 Directional Variants to customize the spacing to however much you want.
This seems to also apply for EditText as well as Buttons, as both appear to have the same problem.

Android ImageButton background color

I have an ImageButton with a background image that has some transparency. By default, the button gets a grey background where the transparency pixels are - due to the Holo.Light theme. I tried setting the background color of the button to transparent via the setBackgroundColor(Color.TRANSPARENT) method. That works just fine and does what I need except now my button no longer has the light blue color when focused/pressed and looks rather flat (no borders around it, so it looks like an image).
I googled and saw that you can assign selectors as explained here but that would mean that I have to specify an image per button state and I don't want to do that. I want to inherit the focuses/pressed colors from the theme but overwrite the normal button background (when not pressed/focused) to transparent instead of grey. How can I achieve that?? Please provide a working example as I have tried many different combinations with no success.
Edit
Thank you all for helping. I figured out how to make this work without having to recreate the same image with the focused and pressed states for each button!
Here is my solution:
My button is defined as:
<ImageButton
android:id="#+id/ImageButton05"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="center"
android:background="#drawable/button" />
And my background XML file (titled button.xml) is defined as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item android:state_pressed="true">
<layer-list>
<item android:drawable="#drawable/btn_default_pressed_holo_light"></item>
<item android:drawable="#drawable/network_wifi"></item>
</layer-list>
</item>
<item android:state_focused="true">
<layer-list>
<item android:drawable="#drawable/btn_default_focused_holo_light"></item>
<item android:drawable="#drawable/network_wifi"></item>
</layer-list>
</item>
<item android:state_hovered="true">
<layer-list>
<item android:drawable="#drawable/btn_default_focused_holo_light"></item>
<item android:drawable="#drawable/network_wifi"></item>
</layer-list>
</item>
<item>
<layer-list>
<item android:drawable="#drawable/btn_default_normal_holo_light"></item>
<item android:drawable="#drawable/network_wifi"></item>
</layer-list>
</item>
</selector>

You can put something into an xml file, for example, custom_button.xml and then set background="#drawable/custom_button" in the button view.
Please refer to this link as there is an xml example: Standard Android Button with a different color
I used it in my code and it worked just the way I wanted.
Reference:
Standard Android Button with a different color
Edited:
If you would rather use
Maybe you should try to set a border.
For example (Reference: Android - border for button ):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:shape="rectangle">
<gradient android:startColor="#FFFFFF"
android:endColor="#00FF00"
android:angle="270" />
<corners android:radius="3dp" />
<stroke android:width="5px" android:color="#000000" />
</shape>
OR,
You could try to set the style/theme for the button. (But it would be in a separate file)
The style/theme contains the color attributes for various states of button such as focused / enabled / disabled/ etc.
For setting background color/image and having click highlight effect,
Here is an example (Reference: How to programmatically setting style attribute in a view)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item
android:state_pressed="true"
android:drawable="#drawable/btn_pressed" />
<item
android:state_pressed="false"
android:drawable="#drawable/btn_normal" />
</selector>
You can then apply this selector to a Button by setting the property android:background="#drawable/my_button".

I want to inherit the focuses/pressed colors from the theme but overwrite the normal button background (when not pressed/focused) to transparent instead of grey. How can I achieve that??
AFAIK you can't because the focus/pressed colors are built in to the same image resources that contain the grey background.
If you want to keep the system focus/pressed but remove the background you'll have to grab a copy of the image resources (which can be found in your SDK at /sdkroot/platforms/[version]/data/res/drawable-hdpi replace [version] with whatever api level you are after. And if needbe replace hdpi with another density) and edit out the grey button from them with a photo editor. Then make a selector that references your modified images and set that as the background for your button.
EDIT:
Here are the default holo button images for focused and pressed

You can use ImageView instead of ImageButton to solve your problem. Please set the android:background property of the ImageView to the background color of the parent.

You can write this in your xml file:
android:background="#null"
It worked for me.

if u don't need the default gray background and u need your ImageButton seems like an icon without no backgrounds just use android:background attribute and set it to
#android:color/transparent**
<ImageButton
android:id="#+id/ImageButton05"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="center"
android:background="#android:color/transparent"
android:background="#drawable/button" />
hope that help anybody

Why does assigning a color to the background of my ListView element not cover the entire ListView background, while assigning a drawable does?

I have a ListView that sits on the left side of a tablet-size screen. My goal was to give it a solid background with a border on the right, then apply an overlapping background on the list element to break that border so that it appears to be a part of the view on the right.
The ListView Background
I achieved the right border using a <layer-list> drawable as suggested by Emile in another question:
rightborder.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item>
<shape android:shape="rectangle">
<solid android:color="#color/black" />
</shape>
</item>
<item android:right="2dp">
<shape android:shape="rectangle">
<solid android:color="#color/white" />
</shape>
</item>
</layer-list>
...and here's the ListView definition for good measure:
<ListView
android:id="#+id/msglist"
android:layout_width="300dp"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:divider="#color/black"
android:dividerHeight="1dp"
android:background="#drawable/rightborder"
android:paddingRight="0dip">
</ListView>
<!-- I added the android:paddingRight after reading something
about shape drawables and padding, don't think it actually
did anything. -->
Attempting to override it with a color
In order to achieve the desired effect, I placed the following in the getView function of my adapter:
//If it's selected, highlight the background
if(position == mSelectedIndex)
convertView.setBackgroundColor(R.color.light_gray);
else
convertView.setBackgroundResource(0);
However, using this method, the black border of the ListView's drawable remained visible, and only the white part of the background was replaced by gray. Here's a screen capture:
Fixing it with a drawable
On a hunch, I replaced the color I was assigning with a shape drawable:
selectedmessage.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<shape android:shape="rectangle"
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >
<solid android:color="#color/light_gray" />
</shape>
getView snippet:
//If it's selected, highlight the background
if(position == mSelectedIndex)
convertView.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.selectedmessage);
else
convertView.setBackgroundResource(0);
This achieves the desired result, as shown below:
The question:
Why does assigning a rectangle as the background for my ListView element cover the entire view, while assigning the color allows the black border to show through? I'm happy it's working, but I'd like to know why Android is rendering the view this way so I can learn more about how Android renders Views.
Other notes:
I'm running the project in the stock Android 3.2 emulator, if that makes any
difference.
One clue may be that the light_gray color background seems to render darker than the light_gray shape resource.
I doubt it makes a difference, but light_gray is:
<color name="light_gray">#FFCCCCCC</color>

You can't do this:
convertView.setBackgroundColor(R.color.light_gray);
setBackgroundColor does not take a resource id : http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/View.html#setBackgroundColor(int)
So your getting some incidental behaviour that isn't doing what your expecting.
You would have to do:
convertView.setBackgroundColor(getResources().getColor(R.color.light_gray);
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/res/Resources.html#getColor(int)