I want to create 16 buttons each have different texts on it.Those text will be picked up randomly from an array depending on another random value.Lets say,
I have 3 words (apple,banana,watermelon), when the activity created it will pick up one of these words.Lets say apple.And in this activity's screen there will be 16 buttons.These buttons must have the letters that apple consists of "a","p","p","l","e" and the remaining buttons will be filled up with other remaining letters of the alphabet.
So in my case what I wonder is should i do the button creation programmatically by taking a value and assigning this value on creation one by one or do it in the xml and leave their text parts and fill up programmatically.
These 2 options in detail :
First : I'm going to create a function which takes a String value as a paramater and returns a button with this text set on it by using setText(); and then locate it in the layout.
Second : I create the layout with those button and leave blank their text parts and in the activity I only assign their letter values.
I vote for the second option but I'd like to know what's your opinion and would there be a difference in terms of performance or memory ?
The disadvantage of declarative approach is that you can get only so
far with XML.
XML is great for look and feel of your user interface, but it does not provide a great way of handling user input. That's where the programmatic approach came.
Everything you can do declarative as well as with programmatically. But java also allows you to specify what happens when the button is actually clicked.
This is the main advantage of programmatic approach to the user interface.
So what is Best ?
Here it is , Both are good at thier point.
1) Use XML , when everything about your user interface is static , such as layout of the screen , all the widget etc.
2) Then switch to the programmatic approach when user interacts with various widget in the user interface.
In other words you would use XML for what the button Looks like and
Java to specify what it does.
Is there any shortcut for editing properties of a widget in Android Layout editor in ADT?
I need to change gravity of TextView lots of times, but every time I have to use mouse...
You could do a search and replace on a particular string in the layout.
Highlight only the TextViews you want the search to happen in
Search > Search
Enter the string to be replaced and press the "Replace" button or "Replace
All" button.
If you post the exact xml listing of your layout, I can be more exact in which string needs to be replaced. If that solution doesn't work for your particular case, to save some time, I suppose you might also be able to create a particular custom Eclipse template for your TextView.
A third option would be to use inheritance and create a customTextView with the gravity already set a certain way.
And a fourth option still would be to set the properties of your TextViews programmatically after the fact using both XML and Java (instead of only using XML).
I need to add a spinner in my PreferenceCategory with a text on its right is there a way to do that? plus when I create a checkboxpreference the text is on the left how can I make the text appear on the right?
thanks.
If you want to use these built in controls you have to use them the way they are designed. Its also good because it fits the android design that users expect.
If you need to do something different, just make your own preference screen. Its just a list view with click handlers, not too hard to make on your own. Then you get the styling you want.
I am wondering if there are any good options to implement a rich text editor in Android. Please note I am talking about a rich text editor that can be used in an Android application, not the one embedded in a web page using HTML and Javascript.
My requirements are:
Basic formatting (color, fonts, highlight, bold, italic, underline, etc.)
Hyperlinks
Inline images
Bullet lists and numbered lists
Inline table (only the contents inside a cell is editable, not the table structure)
As you can see, this is pretty much something quite similar to a typical RichEdit control on Windows.
Here are some efforts (investigation & prototyping) I have made so far:
Using WebView
I have tried using a WebView control to load an HTML fragment with one . The content becomes editable and as it is HTML, I suppose it can meet most of my requirements. But it has several issues:
(deadly) No text caret. The user will have no idea where his/her typed characters will be inserted.
The on-screen soft keyboard is not visible by default. There is a trick that the user has to long-press the Menu button to bring up the keyboard. But I think this is a very bad user experience. Besides, the screen layout is not properly rearranged and the text inserting point sometimes will be covered by the keyboard.
Using EditText
I have tried using the EditText control. It seems to support some level of rich text editing (color, fonts, bold, italic, underline, inline images, bullet lists). But I still cannot figure out how I can implement the following requirements:
Control the appereance of the bullet symbol (dot, circle, dash, arrow, star, etc.)
Numbered list (1., 2., 3., etc.)
Table
BTW, I have seen there are several *Span classes out there but I am not sure if they can be any help... And the http://developer.android.com does not provide much useful information about them.
So, how on earth can I implement a rich text editor on Android?
Can I extends the EditText and add my new functionalities? Or should I do something from scratch - extends the View and implement everything by myself? For later option (extending View), I actually even don't know how to show a text caret and blink it, not mentionging moving the caret with user typing.
I am desperate now... Any hints?
Thanks!
-Tony
(EDIT)
After some further investigation, it looks like extending EditText would be my best bet. I somehow figured out how to use those Span classes and guess I should be able to do most of the tricks by using (extending) them.
For example, extending the BulletSpan and overriding drawLeadingMargin should give me the control of the bullet appereances. Extending the LeadingMarginSpan should help me on the numbered list.
As to the table, my initial plan is to extend the LineBackgroundSpan and draw all the table borders in the drawBackground override. However, I still need to figure out how to layout all the text in the table cells and properly handle the caret movement and selection. Suggestions?
I just published my rich text editor component under the Apache 2.0 license:
https://github.com/1gravity/Android-RTEditor
You can make use of any of the following libraries:-
https://github.com/commonsguy/cwac-richedit
https://github.com/chinalwb/Android-Rich-text-Editor
https://github.com/wasabeef/richeditor-android
https://github.com/irshuLx/Android-WYSIWYG-Editor
I would probably extend both EditText and TableLayout or at least end up using most of their source if there were big enough changes I needed to make.
Can you do the following:
Manually hold the contents in the EditText as your own model (ie by seperating and maintaing the content document and the view attributes as seperate entities).
Override the render (or draw method) to do custom layout on parts of the content document (part of your model) that handle non text characters (say bullets with particular attribute).
To me seems like if you have to muck about with the layout, are you better off writing it from scratch on your own. From what I remember the Edit text (and the richt text editor) is great for anything where you the data is pure text.
There is an open source EditText rich text editor called android-richtexteditor but the code was inexplicably deleted in r5. The code is still there in r4; just use svn to check out r4 or earlier to access it. The code appears to support italics, underline, color picker, text size, and more.
Also answered in these questions: 1, 2
Extend from EditText is a best choice for you, it support CharacterSpan and
ParagraphSpan.
See my App on the Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hly.notes
Check this open source Wordpress mobile application for android.It has very promising Richtexteditor based on Edittext.
You can download the source from here
Thanks
I am looking to create something very similar to what Google has done in the Google+ app.
Its hard to describe but please take a look at this screenshot
Google+ app
I am looking to create something similar, of note is that the tags move to the proper line as they fit.
Is this a completely custom solution that Google wrote or is there a library for this somewhere.
It looks like they are decorating the text in the edit text by using spans. They probably have a listener on the edit text listening for modifications at which point they check to see if the most recently added word matches one of your circles. If it does, the create a span over the text and decorate it with a background drawable, font color change, and by adding an image next to it.
Its probably a pretty significant effort depending on how you want to function, but all that functionality is out there in the sdk.