Hello fellow programers!
I'm trying to figur out if it is possible to develop an application that:
Does not cover the whole screen, and hence, can interact with the application or OS behind.
Always is on top of the other application.
I'm thinking something along the windows-forms on a PC, that can be resized and moved around.
Also, I'm using API 15, but could if necessary change to API 17.
Thanks!
Sony use something called small apps https://play.google.com/store/search?q=small+apps&c=apps, try researching this? http://cdn7.staztic.com/app/a/1240/1240459/small-app-tutorial-184485-0-s-307x512.jpg
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Interestingly enough, I noticed that when developing, I can choose to run a Wear app on the phone instead of a Wear device. It looks the same--just huge, of course.
Based on https://plus.google.com/+AndroidDevelopers/posts/QhWQArNDfS3, I gather I could use ADB to make the phone screen small enough to do a fair imitation of a rectangular smartwatch...
But what about testing for round Android Wear devices? Is there something I can do to the phone (or a rectangular Android Wear device, for that matter) to make it show as a circle (and even better, identify as a round device to Android Wear) in order to test the round interfaces?
Yes, there's always cutting a round hole out of a page and holding that over the device, but that's obviously far from ideal.
You can test your app on a round emulator. Here are instructions how to do this: https://developer.android.com/training/wearables/apps/creating.html
EDIT:
About round and forcing round on a square device: you can try to pretend that the device is round, but it's a little hacky and ugly.
In your Activity you need to implement inset listener and then use reflection to change WindowInsets.mRound field. Then dispatch the insets further down the hierarchy. This will trick your views to think that the device is round.
Check this article about handling square and round: http://gruszczy.blogspot.com/2015/03/handling-round-screens-using.html It describes how insets with the information about device display type are delivered.
I have a Geniatech ATV1220 android set top box running android 4.2.2 and am using an arduino with motion sensor connected to it to modify content on a website when someone is in front of the sensor via NodeJS.
This works great, but what I would like to do is to manipulte the complete system viewport of the android system. For example if someone steps in front of the sensor, the whole system should be displayed in a reduced size like 1/4 original at the bottom right side of the screen while the other area should just display black or basically nothing.
It is really hard to find something because of the pretty common keywords like display, viewport, size and so on. I could probably do it dependent on individual applications but I also want to use it in third party applications, which I cannot modify.
Currently I am sometimes using commands like this:
echo 1 >/sys/class/graphics/fb0/blank
to modify the actual content that is displayed, in this case it all turns black/blank and I wonder if there is a similar way to achieve what I want to do. Any help is greatly appreciated.
What worked in the end was using the Xposed Framework and installing "One-handed mode" like explained here: How to get a one-handed mode on almost any rooted Android device.
I want to add black padding (a thick black border) to the android screen such that every app is displayed with the padding around it. I know how to do this for my app but how do I do this such that when my app is running in background the display is padded?
I don't believe this is possible unless you're willing to create and run a custom ROM.
Thankfully, this is not possible for the average non-ROM third party Android developer.
The screen on mobile devices is actually very limited, and when programming for the mobile environment, you have to learn to get away from the windows metaphor used by traditional desktop PCs.
On the other hand, may be your app could pretend it is running in the background, but still stay in the foreground with its transparency enabled. And perhaps if you can't do something, may be you can find a way to fake that something for your users.
Also, note that the default home launcher is capable of doing something similar to what you want, but only for widgets. And if being able to run widgets is sufficient for you, perhaps you could write your own launcher application that can embed widgets.
What I want to achieve here is to shrink all of the Android's OS UI (everything inclusive) to use only 70-80% of the screen.
The reason is that I wish to have my area to put in whatever I want - apps icons which exist and are always visible (no matter if I am in a browser, or playing angry bird etc).. its like Windows's quick launch or Mac's dock which always stays there . I can also put some important text that I wish to see throughout my interaction with the device or anything else.
I just want to use 20-30% of the screen-size all by myself and run Android on the remaining portion of the screen.
Do you think it is possible? If so, can you please give me pointers?
Thanks much,
Rohan
There are two solutions for me:
1) create custom Android build. Change WindowManager code a little.
2) create own virtual keyboard which will serve keyboard and your stuff (http://developer.android.com/reference/android/inputmethodservice/InputMethodService.html)
this time on android market there are many application that have as a feature to be always on top even if you use your browser or see the phone's menus, you know how to do this thing?
Thanks