Develop Reference

Picker showing as clock instead of spinner

I was creating a one of my activities separately from my main project because it was a big thing.
After making it work, I merged everything in my main app. Most of it was copy-paste and just change the paths and such.
Now, my problem is my time picker has a completely different look.
It should look like this [picker how it should be][1]
but it looks like this [how it's looking right now][2]
Like I said, I didn't change anything. Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks

<TimePicker
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:timePickerMode="spinner">
</TimePicker>
Set timePickerMode to be Spinner

How to set default text in TextView to see it in the layout preview while binding?

So I would like to see my layout preview with the fields filled with something like default placeholders but if I use bindings the settext attribute is already used and the fields are showing empty since there is no info from the models yet.
<TextView
android:id="#+id/tv_user_name"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="center"
android:layout_margin="5dp"
android:gravity="center"
**android:text="#{showBlueportSpotViewModel.name}"**
android:textAllCaps="true"
android:textSize="20sp"
android:textStyle="bold"/>
I tried this:
android:text="#{showBlueportSpotViewModel.name ?? #string/blueport_placeholder_name}"
but I still see the view empty.
Do you guys any workaround? I guess once a workaround is found, it can be used to ImageView and src for example and etc..
Thank you!

You can use the tools attribute to define properties that will appear in the layout preview but will not appear when you run the app.
Add the following to your root view:
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
Then use the tools attribute to define text that will only appear in the layout preview:
tools:text="placeholder text"
The tools attribute is very useful when mocking up views in the editor. All of the tools attributes are stripped when the app is packaged. More information here: http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/tools-attributes

I found a workaround
I added
xmlns:bind="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
to the layout
and just having duplicated declarations in the view like:
android:text="#string/blueport_placeholder_name"
bind:text="#{showBlueportSpotViewModel.name}"
or
android:src="#{showBlueportSpotViewModel.blueportImageDrawable}"
bind:src="#drawable/android_menu_header"
I don't really know if this has secondary wrong consequences so I won't accept this answer until somebody can comment and say if it is okay.. Thanks!

Re-creating Google+ app's UI

I'm fairly new to Android development and planning to build a simple news reader app to further familiarize myself to the platform.
The problem is; I want each of the news-item to look like Google+'s post item below:
Well, basically a big headline picture with a title and some description underneath.
I tried to re-create it using a Button (because the whole thing needs to be clickable by the user) while setting a drawable at the top of the text. It worked quite nicely.. until I decided to add more drawables to it:
Here's my XML code (although I doubt anyone would need it):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content" >
<Button
android:id="#+id/button1"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:drawableLeft="#drawable/ic_launcher"
android:drawablePadding="8dp"
android:drawableTop="#drawable/temp_jakarta"
android:text="Button" />
</RelativeLayout>
Can you tell me why is this happening or maybe, suggest me another way to accomplish this?
Thanks in advance!
p.s., I'm pretty sorry about the link; as a new user, SO didn't allow me to post images just yet. :(

Put everything inside a RelativeLayout and place one relative to others (event on top, this doesn't matter at all) using the layout_below/above/left_of/right_of/... etc.
See http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/layout/relative.html for usage, http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/RelativeLayout.html for a complete reference of the RelativeLayout class and "Android Layout Tricks" series in the Developer Blog for some tips_
http://android-developers.blogspot.com.es/2009/02/android-layout-tricks-1.html
http://android-developers.blogspot.com.es/2009/02/android-layout-tricks-2-reusing-layouts.html
http://android-developers.blogspot.com.es/2009/03/android-layout-tricks-3-optimize-with.html

Custom dialog with the look and feel of a default one - is it possible?

For clarification: I want all the custom dialogs to look like system default dialogs: for example, when user is using htc sense, the dialog should match htc sense dialog style, when user is using samsung with official customasation, the dialog should look like it. I want to go as native as possible. I am familiar that there are possibilities to modify the dialog, but I'm looking for a way to reference to the style the system uses and create a dialog with that.
What I have:
What I would like to achieve:
Code for my dialog layout which I invoke with dialog.setContentView(...):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
style="#android:style/Theme.Dialog"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:orientation="vertical" >
<ListView
android:id="#+id/listView1"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginLeft="10dip"
android:layout_marginRight="10dip" >
</ListView>
</LinearLayout>
As you can see setting the style="#android:style/Theme.Dialog isn't helping. Any ideas what might be helping?
(I am familiar that there is already such a question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6746535/android-custom-dialog-but-with-look-and-feel-of-default-one but there isn't an accepted answer)

If you want the dialog that appear just for your application purpose then follow this:
See this image i have create this one to save Image or Post it to different way.
I have created the xml layout as per my requirement. If you want to add the list view as you have explained in to the question then you have to manualy implement that behaviour in the content of the dialog. Means for such layour You have to implement the Custom ListView that have that radio button and text. And also have some Java code to do action according to that selection.
With that you can acheive as you want.
Enjoy. :)

You can build a native-look like dialog for one UI, but when another user has some other ROM/modified UI, then the dialog doesn't look like a native one to hem/her. There isn't a built in functionality, to access system dialog resources and populate all dialogs from native layouts only.

Emulate android preference category look/feel

I like the title bar style from the Android preference category.
In my Activity (not a PreferenceActivity) How can I use the same style?

Since I just spent the last few hours trying to answer this old question, I'll do it here for anyone else.
It turns out the resource the preference category style is using is listSeparatorTextViewStyle.
You use it like this:
<TextView
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="Hello, World"
style="?android:attr/listSeparatorTextViewStyle"/>
Using style="?android:attr/preferenceCategoryStyle" didn't work.

The main layout is most likely a ScrollView with a LinearLayout. As for the individual layout, I believe (just guessing after looking at the documentation) that you can use the various attributes in android.R.attr - look here: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/R.attr.html. There are attributes like preferenceCategoryStyle, preferenceStyle, etc. You can apply any style to any of your views.