android different themes on landscape and portrait - android

I have an activity that includes tabs. Everything looks good in portrait, but when in landscape the tabs are in the action bar by default and I really like this functionality. The problem is my action bar is green, my tabs are black and the tab selected color is also green. So when switched to landscape I have a green action bar and green tab selected, so there is no visual reference to which tab is selected.
I have tried using the approach having different values folders as in "values-port" and "values-land" and changing the tab selector drawable to black in the "values-land" folder, but the theme disappeared from the landscape and fell back to the default light with dark action bar.
I have done some research on this and found nothing based on two themes based on orientation, I found different themes based on version in which you have different values folders with the version number which is why I thought my approach would work. The developers site has nothing on incorporating two themes based on orientation, I dont even know if it's possible, I just assumed it was.

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SlidingTabStrip indicator underneath SlidingTabLayout

I am using a fragment pager adapter for two tabs, based almost identically on the code from the Sliding Tabs Basic sdk sample. All was working fine until I tried to swap out the action bar for the tool bar. I had to switch up my theme to light, and now I've noticed that the tabs were using a transparent default colour. I want my tabs to be the same colour as the tool bar, but in setting the colour, they are obscuring the sliding tab strip indicator completely. What is the correct way to push the SlidingTabStrip to the front?
I've tried setting the background resource of the tab programmatically rather than via the selectableItemBackground theme property. The background still obscures the indicators.
I've tried to bringToFront() or bringChildToFront() the SlidingTabStrip in multiple places, (it is created in the constructor of the SlidingTabLayout). I've tried it after the for loop in SlidingTabLayout.populateTabStrip() which seems sensible as this is where the tab views are created.
I wonder why no-one else has had this issue ?!
Well I figured out the solution and it actually took me far too long - by inverting the problem we can leave the selectableItemBackground transparent when unpressed, and set:
<item name="android:windowBackground">#color/my_bg_color</item>
in the theme itself. This means I can have my tabs the same colour as the tool bar and not obscure the indicator. It's a weird set-up though, because if I did want the tabs a different colour to the windowBackground or tool bar, with the indicator un-obscured, this would not be the solution!

Android how to dynamically change actionbar tabs text color on orientation change

I'm using a FragmentActivity implementing ActionBar.TabListener.
I have themed my top/title bar to have a dark background, and a white font.
My three tabs, stacked below, have a light background and black font. This looks good in portrait, but for devices with more horizontal pixels, such as tablets, or landscape phones, the tab bar is absorbed into the main title bar. This behavior itself is fine, but the tab font is black and I need to change it to white for this specific scenario.
Is this supported?
I have figured out how to change the bottom highlight color and the tab background color, thanks to Is it possible to change actionbar tab indicator programmatically but I haven't been able to programatically change the font color yet.
I have tried creating a Spannable object, setting the color of that, then assigning that via myTab.setText(), but the theme seems to be overriding this color, although the text characters change is recognized.
Found a workable solution myself:
Using "values-land" and dpi-based descriptors I can use an alternate style for that specific instance (eg, landscape, or high DPI devices like tablets).
Create a 'values-land' folder and a styles.xml file inside of that automatically uses those styles for landscape views.
More info on how to do this: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/providing-resources.html

How to change layout on xlarge screens in ActionBarSherlock

I am building an app that uses ActionBarSherlock. I need to change it's layout so there is no padding arround tab icons. Now it looks like that:
| tab1 | tab2 | tab3 | t
But i want it like that:
|tab1|tab2|tab3|tab4|
I've manage to do so on normal size screens by changing that file:
library/res/values/abs__styles.xml
However on my Galaxy S3 still has padding, I tried changing paddings from:
library/res/values-xlarge/abs__dimens.xml
but no effect. I also tried to remove it but still no changes.
edit:
Just for information, I am using only icons but no text for top. All my icons are in drawable-hdpi, could that be a problem? I don't think so because they are not reseized or anything only paddings apper :S
that one is in values.
so I also tried comment out all lines with
<dimen name="abs__action_bar_icon_vertical_padding">0dip</dimen>
but no effect…
If your Galaxy S3 is running ICS or later, ABS will use the native action bar. Any changes you make to the library will have no effect.
Action Bar Sherlock library has some limitations in it.
Limitation 1 : Adjusting of Action menu items in action bar is not possible
Description :
You can have different action menu items in the action bar and also you can set the icons for that items in the action bar. But, adjusting padding between action items, Removing Toast for the action items in the action bar it is impossible. Because Action bar Sherlock uses native action bar. Only look and feel is similar to ICS, but behavior is restricted.
Limitation 2 : Activity Recreation
Description :
When Screen orientation changes, It will recreate activity which is in active. So User Interface will get updated and also it doesn't save the state of the application or activity..
Be Aware of Action Bar Sherlock
I wouldn't use ABS directly for Tab navigation. Consider using a Viewpager and ViewPagerIndicator, which is comatible with ABS (same author), and there you have a lot more control of the appearance . This way the user can also swip left-right to switch tabs.
Does this happen no matter what? I honestly haven't played too much with a native actionbar. What if you do something like an inset drawable? This would kind-of change how it's drawn and may shrink the icon, but might be a solution until you find something better.

Android change of ActionBar tab from some width

I have one tough question. I am now playing with design of the Android application and I have the problem with way how the tabs are displaying from some width of display. I use ActionBarSherlock library and ViewPager for tabs.
The problem is that I use yellow color for ActionBar, black for tabs and again yellow for tab indicators, but when I look at the application on wider screen or in landscape mode (I guess approximately from width 400dp) I can't see the indicators, because tabs are hiden in action bar and indicator has exactly the same color. Is there som way how to change color of tab indicators from some display width?
I have tried to do it by making of layout-sw400dp/layout.xml, new 9patche's and new styles, but I can't make it work this way and I think now that it is impossible to do it this way. Do you have any idea how to do this?
Thank you very much in advance.
UPDATE
I have solved it in the following way. I have created folders drawable-w400dp and drawable-land (for ancient phones). Only phones where it will probably be displayed in the wrog way are black berry like androids.
Have you tried using the Action bar style generator. I used this and my tabs have highlights in both orientations http://jgilfelt.github.com/android-actionbarstylegenerator/ it generates 9patches and XML for you

When is the ActionBar with Tabs two lines vs one line layout being used?

I've asked a similar question about the Android ActionBar before: Change ActionBar Tabs background color
I still don't have an answer to the question: when will the two line design/when the one line design used? I've set a custom divider to my tab bar and it's also being used in the horizontal layout. However to create drawables/styles based on the orientation/screen size etc I need to know when which layout is being used. Looking through the Android source it seems they are using the same drawables for both layouts, so that doesn't really help me. The same problem applies when changing the font color of the Tab View.
I fear that it'll be decided in code which format is being used, so there's not really any way around this. Can anyone confirm this? Or is there at least a way to find out in code if the Action bar is one lined or two lined?
Android will stack tabs beneath the action bar when it deems the screen size/orientation to be narrow (like on a normal sized screen in portrait, or on a small sized screen regardless of orientation). Similarly if there are many tabs, in some cases they will appear as a drop-down list in order to ensure the best fit in the action bar.
The Action bar is a highly adaptive UI control. If you are going to use its navigation modes I would strongly suggest not trying to anticipate their configuration or attempt to apply styles that are specific to each one. Your tab drawables will always need to be 9patch anyway because the base action bar height will also vary across orientations and screen sizes (notice its height is slightly smaller in landscape).
That said, you can query the action bar height at runtime using its getHeight() method. This Honeycomb Gallery example included in the SDK uses a bunch of logic in an OnGlobalLayoutListener to ensure that the Fragment layout responds to the various action bar sizes appropriately.

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