Develop Reference

Android Studio: View content in scrollView that is off the screen

I'm brand new to android development and I'm using both design view and text view to create a layout.
I've just used a scrollView element on the screen and have started to fill in all of the content. Unfortunately, the content is going off of the page (obviously will be scrollable when it's built). But I would like to be able to see the designed content before I run a build to see it.
Is there any way to expand my view of the scrollView element so I can see the content below the screen?

If you put all of the content you want in a separate layout using merge tag as the top level element you should be able to preview that layout in the preview window. Then just use an include tag to put it into the scrollView
eg
<merge xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
Your content here
</merge>
And
<ScrollView
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">
<include layout="#layout/yourlayout"/>
</ScrollView>
See http://developer.android.com/training/improving-layouts/reusing-layouts.html

Well, obviously you can't scroll the screen in Android Studio, but you can set the visibility of any parent view to gone to see how your off-screen views look like, then change it back by removing the visibility attribute in xml.
You can also copy the views that are off-screen and paste them in another new layout for testing purposes only to see how it looks like.
Generally, you can just run the emulater in Android Studio and see how your design looks like too.

Sizing a ListView when it's a nested Fragment

I want a ListView to fill the space available to it while still leaving room for a small footer view at the bottom of the screen. I'm trying to use a RelativeLayout to accomplish this and attempted to use the solution discussed at Limit number of rows of listview . The problem I'm running into is I'm using nested Fragments, so my ListView is actually a FrameLayout in my xml then I load a ListFragment into that frame dynamically. Given the nested fragment stipulation, how can I get my FrameLayout to "stackFromBottom" as I would with a ListView? I just need to stop the list from pushing the other View off the bottom of the screen. Thanks for your time all.

Here is the solution I came up with:
<TextView
android:id="#+id/advertisement"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="30dp"
android:text="Ads will appear here"
android:gravity="center"
android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"/>
<FrameLayout
android:id="#+id/news_frag"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_below="#id/carousel_menu"
android:layout_above="#id/advertisement"/>
The trick was to set both layout_above AND layout_below for the FrameLayout, I had only been setting one and that was apparently allowing the layout to push it off of the screen. Also worth noting is they had to be declared in reverse order of how they actually appear on the page, so that the FrameLayout could properly reference the other View.

Android how to ignore auto resizing when keyboard pops up?

let's say I have a view that is made up of 2 layers -> top layer and bottom layer. I place them both in a frame layout.
<FrameLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">
<!-- bottom layer -->
<ImageView
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:src="#drawable/some_image_you_shouldnt_shrink"/>
<!-- top layer -->
<EditText
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:background="#color/somewhat_transparent"/>
</FrameLayout>
now, presumably, when i tap on the editText, the keyboard will pop up, and shrink the size of the edit text. However, it seems that the bottom layer is ALSO getting resized. How do i prevent this bottom layer from getting resized?
Note: the framelayout is in a fragment, and the activity that holds this fragment must declare android:windowSoftInputMode="adjustResize".
EDIT*********
Just to clarify, i want the editText layer to adjust as high as the keyboard needs to. however, i don't want the image behind it to adjust at all
i only have 1 activity that handles these similar types of fragments.

You can't prevent a single view from resizing if you set android:windowSoftInputMode="adjustResize". But if you just want to set a non-resizing background, there is a work-around. Instead of setting the background image in the ImageView through XML, add this in your onCreate() method
getWindow().setBackgroundDrawableResource(R.drawable.some_image_you_shouldnt_shrink);

try this in the manifest
android:windowSoftInputMode="stateVisible|adjustPan"

Custom sub menu in android

I have created custom tab bars by following the post given below:
How to create a Tab-like UI in Android?
No I need to display a set on sub menu when the center tab (actually it is a button) is clicked. I need the sub menu to pop up like in this drawing (sub menu should be above my main layout):
I believe that this can be achieved by putting an additional layout above the custom tab bar in which a set of buttons can be placed one after another. But I am not sure which layout needs to be used and how I can get the same style in the drawing. Please help me to find a solution.

you're correct with just adding another layout above the button you want to open it, and then setting its visibility to gone until you want to animate in it.
a regular LinearLayout would work fine, and then adding 4 buttons to it would work as well, then you would want to make sure those buttons used the same styles as the built-in android menu buttons (or style it yourself) but check out some of the built in styles here
example:
your activity
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">
//all your other activity layout stuff goes here
<!--add your new menu-->
<LinearLayout
android:id="#+id/my_menu_layout"
android:visibility="gone"
... />
<Button
android:id="#+id/menu_btn_1"
style="#android:style/Widget.Holo.ActionButton.TextButton" //as example of built-in style
... />
//more buttons
</LinearLayout>
then in your activity class, assign an onClickListener to the button that will toggle the menu and animate the view in
//animation xml you make
Animation inFromBottom = AnimationUtils.loadAnimation(this, R.anim.layout_in_bottom);
mMenuLayout.startAnimation(inFromBottom);
mMenuLayout.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
now your view will animate in and you can go about adding onClick listeners to the buttons

How to use LayoutInflater / ViewStub for an overlay

As I am actually not very confident with programatically changing Views, I have following problem:
At the first start of my app, I want to have an overlay for the main screen, that tells the user to have a look at the settings, as there are two critical options the user has to configure.
I don't want to use an AlertDialog and rather not use a wizard. So, I decided to take an approach similar to Go SMS and create an overlay at the first start. The mockup I created looks like this:
Normal menu:
First start:
So these are the problems I have:
Like I said, I don't want to use a screenshot overlaying on first start, as this would take too much space and would not be language and screen independent.
I would have the circle as an png, but I don't know how exactly put it over the image
The same problem with the text
And finally I want to put a semi-transparent white over the app. It does not necessarily need the hole for the icon, though it would be nice.
In case you need the Layout Source, you can get it at pastebin
So, I just need to get a start here, if it is better to use LayoutInflater or ViewStub and how to realize it, as I have absolutely no experience with it...
Thanks!
/edit: I uploaded a new, more well-arranged layout.

I have faced a similar problem, I client wanted a walkthrough of the application, where the entire screen had to become whiter (as they said: "transparent"), except for the button being explained by an overlay speech-bubble.
Fortunately for you, your layout is not nearly as complicated as the one I had to work with :)
Now, you can get the transparency-effect in two ways, either have a white background and call all the views setAlpha() methods, or you can create a half-transparent white overlay.
If you go with the overlay, you'll have to find a way to display the opaque buttons through the overlay. This can get a bit complicated.
If you go with the first option, you can just setAlpha(1) on the opaque view to get it to show up.
The setAlpha() method is only available from api version 11+, so if you target an earlier version, you might have to do it in a slightly more complicated way.
Example of setting alpha on views pre-honeycomb:
Layout for your buttons (make them however you want, just make them similar so you can loop through them):
<LinearLayout
android:id="#+id/button1"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="vertical">
<ImageView
android:tag="image"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:src="#drawable/tile"/>
<TextView
android:tag="text"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:textColor="#FF000000"
android:text="button1"/>
</LinearLayout>
In your program, when you are want to make the buttons transparent:
LinearLayout l = (LinearLayout) findViewById(R.id.button1);
((ImageView)l.findViewWithTag("image")).setAlpha(0x7F);
((TextView)l.findViewWithTag("text")).setTextColor(0x7F000000);
When you have decided on how you want to create the transparency effect, you will have to decide on how to display the overlay-text/bubble. You'll most likely want to put this in a separate layer on top of your entire layout, to make sure that it is not affected by your new view.
One way to achieve this is by changing your root layout element to a FrameLayout, and then creating/displaying in this. e.g:
<FrameLayout background="#FFFF"> <!-- white background, just in case -->
<LinearLayout>
<!-- the rest of your layout -->
</LinearLayout>
<LinearLayout visibility="gone"> <!-- this will be your overlay view -->
<ImageView /> <!-- the arrow/ring -->
<TextView /> <!-- the description -->
</LinearLayout>
</FrameLayout>
When the introduction is displayed, you set the position of the hidden overlay-view to the position of the table item to be explained, change the text to an appropriate string/resource and display the view.
When the introduction is over, you reset the alpha values of all buttons, and set the visibility of the overlay to gone again.

Since I don't have much experience with ViewStub, I would do it with LayoutInflater.
First of all, you need to have a second layout loaded on top of your current layout. The easiest is to have a FrameLayout, which has as one child your current view, and the dynamically you load the second child on the first start. When you load a content view in an Activity, it will be attached to some already created views (some DecorView, a FrameLayout, etc). So you can either re-use the existing FrameLayout, or you can create a new one.
I would vote for the second solution, since it's more stable (I just mentioned the other possibility in case you want to minimize the number of layers).
So, as a first step, wrap your current layout inside a FrameLayout, and give it an id, let's say "#id/root".
Then, in the onCreate method, you can have something like this:
setContentView(R.layout.main);
if (isFirstRun()) {
ViewGroup parent = (ViewGroup)findViewById(R.id.root); // locate the FrameLayout
LayoutInflater li = LayoutInflater.from(this); // get an instance of LayoutInflater
li.inflate(R.layout.overlay, parent);
}
So far you will have the overlay loaded. Now it's up to you to define the overlay.
To make the whitening effect, just set the following attribute on the root view in your overlay.xml layout:
android:background="#40ffffff"
To position the circle, first you need to find it's location. You can use the View.getLocationOnScreen to get the absolute coordinate of the icon (below the circle) on the screen. Then you can have two options:
either create a custom view (for the overlay) and manually draw the circle at the given location
or add the circle using an ImageView and adjust the left and top margins based on the coordinates