Develop Reference

Attribute to change the color of the tab indicator

This problem is really driving me crazy.
I am using the viewpager indicator without any trouble, but I would like to change something on the final result:
I would like to change the color of the line from blue to green; obviously I would like to keep the same line color when a tab is selected. This is my style file:
<resources>
<style name="collection_field">
<item name="android:layout_width">0dp</item>
<item name="android:layout_height">wrap_content</item>
</style>
<style name="collection_header" parent="collection_field">
<item name="android:textStyle">bold</item>
</style>
<style name="CollectionTabPageIndicator" parent="Widget.TabPageIndicator">
<item name="android:textColor">#android:color/black</item>
</style>
<style name="Theme.Collection" parent="#android:style/Theme.Light.NoTitleBar">
<item name="vpiTabPageIndicatorStyle">#style/CollectionTabPageIndicator</item>
</style>
What attribute am I supposed to use to make this happens? Thanks for your replies.

You'll need to create your own tab indicators then apply them using the android:background attribute in your CollectionTabPageIndicator style.
<style name="CollectionTabPageIndicator" parent="Widget.TabPageIndicator">
<item name="android:textColor">#android:color/black</item>
<item name="android:background">#drawable/your_tab_indicator</item>
</style>
The easiest way to create your own green indicators is to use the Action Bar Style Generator.
Once there, turn on the Tab hairline style and apply your Tab indicator color. Then download the zip, copy over all of your tab indicator resources into the appropriate drawable folders, and finally add it your style.
For reference, here's the default blue indicator res/drawable/vpi__tab_indicator

How to change ActionBar Tab styles in API 14 and above

I am trying to fit 5 tabs at the top using the ViewPager view. I need those 5 tabs to fit on the screen width. It does not, so I was able to decrease the text size to make it fit, but then the text is too small. So now I am trying to take away some of the padding for each tab like so:
<style name="CustomActionBarTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light">
<item name="android:actionBarTabTextStyle">#style/MyActionBarTextTheme</item>
<!-- <item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/MyActionBarTheme</item> -->
</style>
<style name="MyActionBarTheme" parent="Widget.AppCompat.Light.Base.ActionBar.TabView">
<item name="android:padding">0dp</item>
</style>
<style name="MyActionBarTextTheme" parent="Widget.AppCompat.Light.ActionBar.TabText">
<item name="android:textSize">10sp</item>
</style>
Except nothing happens. In fact the tabs completely disappear. Is there something more specific I should be doing? Thanks.

Theming Android ActionBar: Change TabBar Background

I followed this Guide to style my ActionBar. I use fixed tabs in my app so I want to theme the tabs too.
(Note: I'm using the appcompat theme to ensure some backwards compatibility)
So I used
<style
name="CustomTheme"
parent="#style/Theme.AppCompat.Light" >
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/CustomActionBar</item>
<item name="actionBarStyle">#style/CustomActionBar</item>
<item name="android:actionBarTabStyle">#style/CustomActionBarTabs</item>
<item name="actionBarTabStyle">#style/CustomActionBarTabs</item>
</style>
as my theme.
I set the ActionBar background without problems, but then I tried theming the tabs with:
<style
name="CustomActionBarTabs"
parent="#style/Widget.AppCompat.ActionBar.TabView" >
<item name="android:background">#drawable/customtheme_actionbar_tab_indicator</item>
<item name="background">#drawable/customtheme_actionbar_tab_indicator</item>
</style>
The background points to a StateList where I set different drawables for different contexts, which works kind of as expected. Except it works just for the tabs. Not for the ActionBar.
The separator and the background of the tab bar is not themed.
How can I theme those ? (The grey part)
Theme Creation Guidelines
I wonder if there are any guidelines for creating a theme that looks good ?
(good = similar to default theme, so the app fits into the android ecosystem)
Because If you look closely at the default themes you can see a small line at the bottom of the ActionBar drawable. (The part which is light green in my theme)
There may be other things which you should consider when creating a theme that looks similar to the default themes, so it would be nice to some guideline.
Also: Should the TabBar always be darker than the ActionBar ?
(If so, how much darker?)
How much brighter/darker than the ActionBar color should the image color (like the color of the overflow button in the image) be ?
Thanks in advance,
Uriel

Add this
<style
name="CustomTheme"
parent="#style/Theme.AppCompat.Light" >
.
.
.
<item name="android:actionBarTabBarStyle">#style/TabBar</item>
</style>
And then
<style name="TabBar" parent="#style/Widget.AppCompat.ActionBar.TabBar">
<item name="android:background">/** Whatever color you want, like #ffff00 **/</item>
</style>

Just incase, it may help somebody
This below worked for me
<style name="Theme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">
<item name="actionBarTabStyle">#style/Theme.MyActionBarTab</item>
<item name="actionBarTabTextStyle">#style/Theme.MyActionBarTabText</item>
</style>
<style name="Theme.MyActionBarTab" parent="#style/Widget.AppCompat.ActionBar.TabView">
<item name="android:background">#color/gray_mask</item>
</style>
<style name="Theme.MyActionBarTabText" parent="Widget.AppCompat.Light.ActionBar.TabText">
<item name="android:textColor">#color/black</item>
<item name="android:textSize">#dimen/size_28</item>
<item name="android:gravity">center</item>
<item name="textAllCaps">false</item>
</style>

Actionbar fills transparent icon pixels with wrong background

I am using actionbar sherlock. I have an icon with transparent pixels. But when I run my app, it seems "something" is replacing these transparent pixels with the main background from the theme, not the actionbar background.
It does not matter if the main background is specified as a #color or a #drawable (9 patch) but in the latter case (which is what I actually want) there is an additional quirk in that a few pixels of the main background 9 patch appear at the right(!) hand edge of the actionbar. Go figure.
I have no idea what's going on here. Just that if I remove the background items from the main style, the actionbar looks as it should (so that seems to be the problem).
Has anyone else seen such behaviour before? Thanks for taking a look!
I'll paste my style.xml below:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
<declare-styleable name="ViewPagerIndicator">
<attr name="vpiSubTabPageIndicatorStyle" format="reference"/>
</declare-styleable>
<style name="Theme.StandBy" parent="Theme.Sherlock.Light.DarkActionBar">
<item name="vpiTabPageIndicatorStyle">#style/CustomTabPageIndicator</item>
<item name="vpiSubTabPageIndicatorStyle">#style/CustomSubTabPageIndicator</item>
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/Theme.StandBy.App.ActionBar</item>
<item name="actionBarStyle">#style/Theme.StandBy.App.ActionBar</item>
<!-- ------------------------------------------ ->
<!-- I tried both of these, but can't get transparent pixels in my icon to work --->
<!-- when I use the 9 patch (frg_background) in stead of a plain color, there -->
<!-- are extra artefacts in that some of the 9 patch pixels end up on the righthand -->
<!-- side of the action bar -->
<!--<item name="android:background">#drawable/frg_background</item>
<item name="background">#drawable/frg_background</item>-->
<item name="android:background">#color/cream</item>
<item name="background">#color/cream</item>
<!-- ------------------------------------------ ->
</style>
<style name="Theme.StandBySubTab" parent="Theme.Sherlock.Light.DarkActionBar">
<item name="vpiTabPageIndicatorStyle">#style/CustomSubTabPageIndicator</item>
</style>
<style name="Theme.StandBy.App.ActionBar" parent="Widget.Sherlock.ActionBar">
<!--
Both `android:xyz` and `xyz` need to be set to support 4.x and 2.x devices.
-->
<item name="android:displayOptions">showHome</item>
<item name="displayOptions">showHome</item>
<item name="android:background">#drawable/bar</item>
<item name="background">#drawable/bar</item>
</style>
<!-- top tab style -->
<style name="CustomTabPageIndicator" parent="Widget.TabPageIndicator">
<item name="android:background">#drawable/tab_background</item>
<item name="android:textAppearance">#style/CustomTabPageIndicator.Text</item>
<item name="android:divider">#drawable/tab_divider</item>
<item name="android:showDividers">middle</item>
<item name="android:paddingLeft">4dp</item>
<item name="android:paddingRight">4dp</item>
</style>
<style name="CustomTabPageIndicator.Text">
<item name="android:textColor">#color/tab_text</item>
<item name="android:textSize">10sp</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">bold</item>
</style>
<!-- sub tab style -->
<style name="CustomSubTabPageIndicator" parent="Widget.TabPageIndicator">
<item name="android:background">#drawable/sub_background</item>
<item name="android:textAppearance">#style/CustomSubTabPageIndicator.Text</item>
<item name="android:paddingLeft">4dp</item>
<item name="android:paddingRight">4dp</item>
</style>
<style name="CustomSubTabPageIndicator.Text">
<item name="android:textColor">#color/sub_text</item>
<item name="android:textSize">10sp</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">bold</item>
</style>
</resources>
EDIT: since the problem goes away if I do not specify background and android:background in my main style (Theme.StandBy) it occurred to me I might be asking the wrong question. My purpose in putting these items in is to specify a default background for all of my fragments (content of tabs). That works, but has the unwanted side-effects I mentioned above. Should I be doing this in another way? Thanks for any suggestions!

Properties that you set on the theme will be inherited by EVERY view when the view resolves its styles. In your case, every view that doesn't have an explicit background set somewhere else will render an #color/cream background. This is bound to cause the kinds of visual problems you're experiencing, as well as creating massive amounts of unnecessary overdraw.
A much better way to apply common styling to your fragments is to simply create a style
<style name="Fragment">
<item name="android:background">#color/cream</item>
</style>
and reference it from the root view of each fragment, e.g.
<LinearLayout style="#style/Fragment">
...
</LinearLayout>
This means a bit of extra typing as the reference to the style needs to go into each fragment, but there is no good way to avoid this -- Conceptually only View classes can have their own default style set by the theme (e.g. you can point the textViewStyle attribute at a style definition, and it will apply to all TextViews). However Fragments (or Activities for that matter) aren't Views, so this mechanism doesn't apply.

Android ActionBar Sherlock - Remove divider between tabs altogether

I'm trying to remove the divider between the tabs in an ActionBar (actually an ActionBarSherlock) altogether; i.e. no image between tabs and no gap between the tabs either (I'm using a tiled image background in the tabs). Ideally, I'd like the dividers removed in the XML, rather than in code.
I've tried a few approaches, but nothing seems to be working, such as:
<style name="Theme.MyTheme.ActionBarTab" parent="Widget.Sherlock.ActionBar.TabBar">
<item name="android:divider">#null</item>
<item name="divider">#null</item>
<item name="actionBarDivider">#drawable/empty</item>
<item name="android:showDividers">none</item>
</style>

Turns out I was setting the wrong style. The android:showDividers attribute does work, but when it's applied to the style that inherits from the Widget.Sherlock.ActionBar.TabBar style. So the relevant bits of XML are:
<style name="Theme.Client" parent="Theme.Sherlock.Light.DarkActionBar">
<item name="android:actionBarTabBarStyle">#style/Theme.Client.ActionBarTabBar</item>
<item name="actionBarTabBarStyle">#style/Theme.Client.ActionBarTabBar</item>
</style>
<style name="Theme.Client.ActionBarTabBar" parent="Widget.Sherlock.ActionBar.TabBar">
<item name="android:background">#drawable/tab_bar_bg_tiled</item>
<item name="background">#drawable/tab_bar_bg_tiled</item>
<item name="android:showDividers">none</item>
</style>