Develop Reference

Customizing Support Action Bar / Android

I recently started Android programming, all is good and dandy, but I've came across a problem that I couldn't find an answer to, and I really diged hard for 4 days so far.
My app uses support action bar, and to be specific "android.support.v7.app.ActionBarActivity". Long story short, I couldn't handle most of the stuff applicable to an Action Bar to this support one.
My app uses this support action bar by default due to setting up my mini sdk version to 14.
I want to be able to build an action bar from scratch, and customize it, since the default action bar is not responsive to my customization in styles.xml, etc.
I don't mind using Holo theme library instead of AppCompat.
So the question here, how can use Action Bar instead of Support Action Bar?
How can I extend my java class to use that instead of the support one?
Because none of the online customizing solutions are applicable to the support action bar.
A bit foggy description so I apologize for that.

Create a new project, and select the minimum API level as 15. When you do this, the appcompat-v7 library will not be required for this project as it is for projects with minSdkversion < 15. In this project, the classes android.app.ActionBarActivity and android.app.ActionBar will be used by default, i.e. the native AOSP classes and not the ones from the support library.
The following will let you have an ActionBar with custom background color as you want it, on API level 8 and above.
STEP 1. In your res/values folder, define an XML file theme.xml and add the following to it:
<resources
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools">
<style name="DefaultActionBarTheme" parent="#style/Theme.AppCompat.Light">
<item name="android:actionBarStyle" tools:targetApi="11">#style/MyActionBar</item>
<item name="actionBarStyle">#style/MyActionBar</item>
<item name="android:actionBarSize" tools:targetApi="11">#dimen/action_bar_wrap_content</item>
<item name="actionBarSize">#dimen/action_bar_wrap_content</item>
</style>
<style name="MyActionBar" parent="#style/Widget.AppCompat.Light.ActionBar">
<item name="android:background" tools:targetApi="11">#color/actionbarbgcolor</item>
<item name="background">#color/actionbarbgcolor</item>
<item name="android:height" tools:targetApi="11">#dimen/action_bar_wrap_content</item>
<item name="height">#dimen/action_bar_wrap_content</item>
</style>
</resources>
In the same folder make another XML file colors.xml and add the following to it:
<resources>
<color
name="actionbarbgcolor">#00FF00
</color>
</resources>
and to the existing file dimens.xml, add the last line:
<resources>
<!-- Default screen margins, per the Android Design guidelines. -->
<dimen name="activity_horizontal_margin">16dp</dimen>
<dimen name="activity_vertical_margin">16dp</dimen>
<!-- Optional, in case you wish to increase the default width of the Action Bar. -->
<dimen name="action_bar_wrap_content">55dp</dimen>
</resources>
In place of #00FF00 above, use the hex color code for the background color you wish to use in your ActionBar.
NOTE: The above will work assuming you are using the appcompat-v7 library. If not, then you'll have to use one of the Holo.Light themes instead of AppCompat.Light, and there will be other changes as well.
STEP 2. In your manifest file, you must add:
android:theme="#style/DefaultActionBarTheme"
to every <activity declaration if that Activity has the ActionBar.
Try this. It will work.

Zygotelnit answer works but you have to omit the ["tools:targetApi="11"] from item declaration otherwise it will give you an error for some reason.
On the other hand, I've found a much shorter and easier but not so optimized solution.While searching through the actionBar class and playing around here is the answer:
In your activity.java, go down to
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
Anywhere appropriate in that method, write the following code:
ActionBar actionBar = getSupportActionBar();
actionBar.setBackgroundDrawable(new
ColorDrawable(Color.parseColor("#D62D20")));
You replace the color code by any color code of your choosing. It's obviously a hex color code.

Action bar Background Color Not Changing

I have a style file where i am setting some action bar style like this
<style name="ActionBar.Solid.Pro" parent="#style/Widget.Sherlock.ActionBar.Solid">
<item name="background">#color/dialer_color</item>
<item name="backgroundStacked">#color/dialer_color</item>
<item name="backgroundSplit">#color/dialer_color</item>
<item name="android:progressBarStyle">#style/ProgressBar.Pro</item>
</style>
Now i want to change the color of action bar programmatically like this`
getSupportActionBar.setBackgroundDrawable(new ColorDrawable(Color.Red));
But it do not have any effect. Can you please tell me why , where i am doing wrong
Is it possible to change the ActionBar.TabView background programatically ?
I am setting my style like this, how can i change the background of this style attribute ?
<style name="ActionBarTabStyle.Pro" parent="#style/Widget.Sherlock.ActionBar.TabView">
<item name="android:background">#color/dialer_color</item>
</style>

See you can refer to android action bar style generator
That makes the work of customising the action bar much easier
I advice you that you must have a look on this link
It will surely help you
http://jgilfelt.github.io/android-actionbarstylegenerator/#name=example&compat=holo&theme=light&actionbarstyle=solid&texture=0&hairline=0&neutralPressed=1&backColor=E4E4E4%2C100&secondaryColor=D6D6D6%2C100&tabColor=33B5E5%2C100&tertiaryColor=F2F2F2%2C100&accentColor=33B5E5%2C100&cabBackColor=FFFFFF%2C100&cabHighlightColor=33B5E5%2C100
And one more thing when you will be done with specifying the colors then you will receive the set of images in an archive i.e. .zip format
So you must extract them in their respective folders or directories
In the directory naming "res"

My suggestion is to drop the ActionBar alltogether and use the new Toolbar from the AppCompatLibrary V21. There you just specify Primary and Accent Colors and your background will be set, as well as all controls on it.
For starters this is described in the blog from Chris Banes:
appcompat v21: material design for pre-Lollipop devices!

ActionBar Light, but Holo Dark ActionMode CloseButton

I have a Theme.Holo.Light style, which is custom designed. Therefore I want to have the little tick on the contextual action mode in normal Theme.Holo style.
As you can see, it would look much better if the tick was white.
I thought the following would work, but no success.
<style name="PlayerTheme" parent="#android:style/Theme.Holo.Light">
...
<item name="android:actionModeCloseButtonStyle">#android:style/Widget.ActionButton.CloseMode</item>
</style>
Is there some way to make the tick white? Thanks!

You can copy the standard white check mark from the android icon pack into your project as a drawable. The icon pack can be found here: https://developer.android.com/design/downloads/index.html. It's under the 01_core_accept folder and named ic_action_accept.png.
Then, set the following property in your style file:
<item name="android:actionModeCloseDrawable">#drawable/ic_action_accept</item>
That should solve your problem.

ActionBarSherlock with Action Bar Style Generator

for the last few days I'm trying to implement custom theme, which is created by Action Bar Style Generator to my application. I'm able to use theme with some generic samples from SDK, but I'm not able to use it with my application which uses ActionBarSherlock.
My application with ActionBarSherlock is a modified sample of Tabs and Pager.
Steps which I do:
Create theme with Android Action Bar Style Generator.
Copy theme to res folder inside my application.
Change theme in Manifest file.
After those steps only 'Action bar color' changes to correct one. All other styles are not used in application. I have tried many different approaches which I found online, but without success.
Thank you very much for your help.

Did you add the proper items to your App's theme in styles.xml? You need to use attributes that are NOT prefixed with android:, for example:
<item name="actionBarStyle">#style/Widget.Styled.ActionBar</item>
<item name="background">#drawable/bg_striped</item>
<item name="backgroundSplit">#drawable/bg_striped_split</item>
You would also keep the properly prefixed ones for Android versions that have native actionbar.
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/Widget.Styled.ActionBar</item>
<item name="android:background">#drawable/bg_striped</item>
<item name="android:backgroundSplit">#drawable/bg_striped_split</item>
The best place to understand this is to look at the demo provided with the ActionBarSherlock library project.

I managed to fix the problem.
I missed android:background attribute in TabWidget. This partially
solves the problem.
I had to set setLeftStripDrawable and setRightStripDrawable programatically.

Does Holo Theme work with custom titlebar?

I've got an application that draws a custom title bar using the following style for the application theme:
<style name="App_Theme" parent="android:Theme">
<item name="android:windowTitleSize">30dip</item>
<item name="android:windowTitleBackgroundStyle">#style/App_TitleBackground</item>
</style>
This does not give me the holo theme. So I set the to parent="#android:style/Theme.Holo". This crashes the application with the following error:
E/AndroidRuntime(2048): Caused by: android.util.AndroidRuntimeException: You cannot combine custom titles with other title features
Is it disallowed to use custom title bar using:
requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_CUSTOM_TITLE);
Or am I missing something here?
PS:
The code works perfectly fine with the parent set to "Android:Theme".
I'm using API Level 14

Let your activity use a theme with following attribute:
<item name="android:windowActionBar">false</item>

mido is correct
<item name="android:windowActionBar">false</item>
is the solution when using #android:style/Theme.Holo (default for ICS).
One observation, if you use #android:style/Theme.Holo.NoActionBar change it back to the default #android:style/Theme.Holo.

Mostly for the benefit of future visitors, one cannot use Window.FEATURE_CUSTOM_TITLE with Holo themes. Setting android:windowActionBar is not what I wanted, since I wanted a title bar, although a customized one.
My workaround, was to requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE) and add another layout that looked like a titlebar in my activity. That way, I get the best of both worlds.