Develop Reference

Need a gradient on the bottom of the screen

In the image below is the effect I want(notice the subtle green at the bottom of the screen). I also want to use it as multiple screens so I want it to be the background. Is there any way to achieve this?

Set the png as background, or create a shape in xml:
Create an xml file - let's call it "gradient_background.xml"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:shape="rectangle">
<gradient
android:angle="90"
android:startColor="#ff0000ff"
android:endColor="#00ffffff"/>
<corners android:radius="10dp" />
</shape>
Change the hex color values to the ones you want.
and add it as background to your ViewGroup e.g. LinearLayout:
android:background="#drawable/gradient_background"
EDIT:
To achieve what you mentioned in your comment, that the gradient height should stay fixed while positioned at the bottom, but the white area can stretch vertically, I suggest you use a nine-patch which you can create with the Draw Nine Patch Tool. Launch the tool from your SDK's tools folder - click the nine-patch bat file (and wait a while for it to launch, then import your png). You then draw black lines along the sides of your image to define which parts can be stretched, name the file something.9.png and reference it as background in your ViewGroup. Please see the linked-to documentation for details.

How do I create the equivalent of a css outset border in Android?

If you create an outset border in CSS the browser varies the border colour for each edge to make the shape appear to protrude from its parent.
Is there an easy way to do this in an android layout or do I need to set each line colour manually?
Update - added example below:
Example http://www.witzelsucht.co.uk/googleplusheader.png

Set the background of an ImageView to a 9 patched drawable resource with the desired shadow/bevel around the edge. Lets say it takes 5 pixels to create the effect you want. Then set the padding of the ImageView to 5 pixels. Then set the bitmap to any image.
ImageView.setBackgroundDrawable
ImageView.setPadding
ImageView.setImageBitmap
Even easier, use a shape with a stroked border and set it as the background of the view:
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<solid android:color="#00000000" />
<stroke android:width="1px" android:color="#ffffff" /></shape>

I'm not aware of any native support for Views to have borders. Your question reminded me of this question that I was looking at recently:
Is there an easy way to add a border to the top and bottom of an Android View?

Custom EditText vertical alignment

I created a custom EditText (actually, I just set a background drawable). The problem is that its text is always top-aligned, and I want it to be vertical-center-aligned. I've already tried to set its gravity to CENTER_VERTICAL, but it doesn't work. This is the drawable I created:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:shape="rectangle" android:gravity="center_vertical">
<solid android:color="#FFFFFF"/>
<stroke android:width="1dp" android:color="#88BA52" />
<corners
android:bottomRightRadius="10dp"
android:bottomLeftRadius="10dp"
android:topLeftRadius="10dp"
android:topRightRadius="10dp"/>
</shape>
And here's how I create it:
searchEditText = new EditText(getContext());
searchEditText.setTextSize(12);
searchEditText.setSingleLine();
searchEditText.setGravity(Gravity.CENTER_VERTICAL);
searchEditText.setHint(R.string.search_hint);
searchEditText.setBackgroundDrawable(
getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.search_field));
addView(searchEditText);

searchEditText.setGravity(Gravity.CENTER | Gravity.LEFT);
This might help

Try reducing your font size. For whatever reasons, I have found if your font size is too large, even if it appears to you the EditText should be tall enough to hold the text, the text will appear to be higher than properly centered vertically.
Adjust your font size down, or specify a font size if you are using default value, until you find a font size value small enough for it to appear properly centered.

I'm seeing the same issue. Programmatically creating an EditText resulted in the gravity being vertically forced to TOP (while horizontal centering still works) ... until I commented out the calls that set the background! In this case, vertical and horizontal gravity are both honored.
Here is my code:
inputField.setLayoutParams(new LayoutParams(LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT, LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT));
inputField.setLinksClickable(false);
inputField.setInputType(ie.getInputType());
inputField.setFadingEdgeLength(0);
inputField.setHorizontalFadingEdgeEnabled(false);
inputField.setPadding(borderWidth.left,borderWidth.top,borderWidth.right,borderWidth.bottom);
inputField.setOnEditorActionListener(this);
inputField.setHint(hint);
inputField.setCompoundDrawables(null, null, null, null);
// comment out the next two lines to see gravity working fine
inputField.setBackgroundDrawable(null);
inputField.setBackgroundColor(Color.WHITE);
inputField.setTextColor(Color.BLACK);
inputField.setTextSize(TypedValue.COMPLEX_UNIT_PX, 20);
inputField.setGravity(Gravity.CENTER_HORIZONTAL | Gravity.CENTER_VERTICAL);
Now, step tracing in the OS source code reveals that the computation for vertical centering strangely relies on the height reported by the background. Defaut in EditText is a NinePatchDrawable with a 64 pixels high default bitmap. If your EditText is this height, your text will be centered. Otherwise, it will be closer to top than it should. Setting a background color will internally use a ColorDrawable which reports an intrinsic height of zero, therefore only using the text height and vertically aligning it to TOP.
The way to fix this issue is to create your own Drawable subclass, set it as the background of the EditText instance, make sure you call setBounds() on the drawable so it has a height to report, and override the getIntrinsicHeight() method of the drawable to report the height that was set using setBounds().

Android activity with multiple repeating backgrounds

I'm still new to android and i'm having trouble creating a layout with two backgrounds that tile in the x direction but not y.
I've mocked up what I'm trying to create here...
http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/6008/cnbackground.png
So the top section repeats horizontally, then there's a flat creen section in the middle in which I will center my content, then there's some horizontally repeating grass along the bottom.
Has anyone tried to do anything like this before?
Jon

Here's a good simple tutorial on the repeated background image part:
http://androidblogger.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-to-have-tiled-background-cont.html
As far as the layout, I'd go with a RelativeLayout as my main parent layout, and then you'll have three sub-layouts to represent the top, middle, and bottom sections. Use android:layout_alignParentTop on the top layout, android:layout_alignParentBottom on the bottom, and the middle content layout should have the attributes android:layout_above and android:layout_below set to the #+id's of the bottom and top (respectively).

You can mimic repeat-x by using a layer-list as the drawable. You tile bitmap image both x and y and then use an offset solid shape to fill over the repeated y images. Isn't perfect, but will do the job.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >
<item>
<bitmap
android:src="#drawable/icon"
android:tileMode="repeat" />
</item>
<item android:top="60dp">
<shape >
<solid android:color="#FF000000" />
</shape>
</item>
</layer-list>

GridView row height

I have a GridView that displays images, which are, unfortunately, of different sizes. They are shown in between two lines of text:
text1.1 text1.2
ImageView(IMAGE1) ImageView(IMAGE2)
text2.1 text2.2
text3.1
ImageView(IMAGE3)
text4.1
etc....
If IMAGE1 is the same height as IMAGE2, everything is fine, but if IMAGE1 is longer than IMAGE2, text2.1 will run into text3.1 (padding doesn't seem to help much, as there's too much of it when images are of the same height).
I know there's a way to stretch the images in the ImageView so they are the same height, but is it possible to keep images as is and set the row height somehow?

You are in control over your row heights, by virtue of what you put in them. Since your cells appear to have more than one widget, they are presumably wrapped in a LinearLayout or something. Set your LinearLayouts to be some specific height, and the rows will all be that height.
Personally, I think you should be resizing your images if you are going to have text above and below each image on a per-cell basis.

Use drawable as background on Layout that is your grid cell and define that drawable with:
<size android:height="<some height>" />
For example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:shape="rectangle">
<solid android:color="#ffffff"/>
<size android:height="60dip" />
</shape>

Here is an alternative solution that pre-measures items and sets the height of each cell to the max height in that row.
GridView rows overlapping: how to make row height fit the tallest item?