My calculator app consists of 30 buttons. I want to provide themes for the calculator keypad. A theme changes button background (gradients, not image backgrounds) and font. Some themes have the same color for all buttons while some have a color for numbers, another color for operators and so on.
The color change is using selectors from res/drawable/*.xml
How do I change the theme via the code?
Hopefully avoiding typing:
button.setBackground(Drawable background);
button.setTypeface(font);
30 times. And if I have 5 themes, then 30 * 5 * 2 = 300 lines of codes!!
I'm new to this and if there is no other way I'll go with the 150 lines.
Also how do I save the user theme selection? Using preferences?
You can create a custom XML theme which will change all of your XML components. After creating a new theme, go into the Android Manifest file and change the theme. For example:
<activity
android:name="com.myapp.MyActivity"
...
android:theme="#style/MyCustomTheme" />
To create the theme, go to res/values/themes.xml and create a new theme with an identifier:
<resources>
...
<style name="MyCustomTheme" parent="android:style/Theme">
<item name="android:textColorPrimary">#ffff0000</item>
</style>
...
</resources>
By using this method, you can create an extensive library of different themes and change to what theme you want.
NOTE: This is not just for changing the background, but it can also be used to change the theme of the buttons. Visit this website for more information:
http://janrain.com/blog/introduction-to-android-theme-customization/
EDIT: As that user commented, it is possible that you can put the function to change the theme of the button in a for() loop.
For your case, I have derived this from the link above. It will change the texture of the buttons in your XML file rather than in Java.
"Using a Custom Nine-Patch With Buttons
A nine-patch drawable is a special kind of image which can be scaled in width and height while maintaining its visual integrity. Nine-patches are the most common way to specify the appearance of Android buttons, though any drawable type can be used.
Example nine-patch PNG.
Notice the one pixel black lines around the edge, they control the scaling of the image.
Save this bitmap as MyApplication/res/drawable/my_nine_patch.9.png
Define a new style (you can define the new style in the same file that you defined your custom theme from Creating a Custom Android Theme above) …:
<resources>
...
<style name="MyCustomButton" parent="android:Widget.Button">
<item name="android:background">#drawable/my_nine_patch</item>
</style>
...
</resources>
Apply the new button style to the buttonStyle attribute of your custom theme:
<resources>
...
<style name="MyCustomTheme" parent=...>
...
<item name="android:buttonStyle">#style/MyCustomButton</item>
</style>
...
</resources>
Now the buttons in the activities your theme is applied to have custom images. However, you may notice that they don’t change appearance when selected. Read Selector Drawables below for an introduction to using multiple drawables to define one drawable that changes based on state."
From here, you can change certain components of the theme (such as the button texture as an image).
After you have a theme that looks good, apply it in the Android Manifest as I mentioned above.
I will FURTHER edit this if it still does not answer your question.
Related
Can anyone tell me how I can change my apps theme from the default ones made available? Holo and Holo.Light get a bit boring after a while.
The likes of Facebook, Google+, BBC Weather, Viber, Vine and Twitter all look very professional and have their own theme whereas the app I'm developing looks quite boring.
Is it possible to change the font of the text in my app? I know it's possible to change the colour and size of it.
Another thing which would be useful to know would be how to change the colour of the action bar that is used for my app. Currently it's black but I wouldn't mind changing it to a different colour than those used by the Android default themes (e.g. purple, green, blue, etc)
Maybe you can share some tips on what you think works well for Android design?
You can generate a custom theme at http://jgilfelt.github.io/android-actionbarstylegenerator/
If you only want to change a few font an colors etc take a closer look at this (source:http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/themes.html)
If you like a theme, but want to tweak it, just add the theme as the parent of your custom theme. For example, you can modify the traditional light theme to use your own color like this:
<color name="custom_theme_color">#b0b0ff</color>
<style name="CustomTheme" parent="android:Theme.Light">
<item name="android:windowBackground">#color/custom_theme_color</item>
<item name="android:colorBackground">#color/custom_theme_color</item>
</style>
(Note that the color needs to supplied as a separate resource here because the android:windowBackground attribute only supports a reference to another resource; unlike android:colorBackground, it can not be given a color literal.)
Now use CustomTheme instead of Theme.Light inside the Android Manifest:
<activity android:theme="#style/CustomTheme">
perhaps I don't know how to search for that - everything I found only is about changing the app theme.
I want to know how I can develop a whole theme for the android device itself?
On the market you'll find many themes out there - how can I build one, too?
I don't want to use 3rd party licences (ThemeMaker etc)...anyone who has a tutorial for me?
Thanks for your help!
You should read up on the Android Developer site - Styles and Themes http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/themes.html
A style is a collection of properties that specify the look and format for a View or window. A style can specify properties such as height, padding, font color, font size, background color, and much more. A style is defined in an XML resource that is separate from the XML that specifies the layout.
Styles in Android share a similar philosophy to cascading stylesheets in web design—they allow you to separate the design from the content.
Apply a theme to an Activity or application
To set a theme for all the activities of your application, open the AndroidManifest.xml file and edit the <application> tag to include the android:theme attribute with the style name. For example:
<application android:theme="#style/CustomTheme">
If you like a theme, but want to tweak it, just add the theme as the parent of your custom theme. For example, you can modify the traditional light theme to use your own color like this:
<color name="custom_theme_color">#b0b0ff</color>
<style name="CustomTheme" parent="android:Theme.Light">
<item name="android:windowBackground">#color/custom_theme_color</item>
<item name="android:colorBackground">#color/custom_theme_color</item>
</style>
In my application I have different Themes - one dark and one bright theme. Each theme requires his own icon set.
How do I apply it to the theme? Is there something like a special folder like for icons with different sizes ?
The following serves as a hint...
I suppose this may help: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/R.attr.html#icon
Lets say you have the following themes...
<style name="MyTheme.Dark">
...
</style>
<style name="MyTheme.Light">
...
</style>
You can add <item name="android:icon"></item> to each theme and supply each one with their own drawable icon. Then to get the respective drawables in your layout or what have you, you need to make use of ?android:attr/icon.
So your layout may end up looking something like...
<View
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:background="?android:attr/icon"/>
If you're unsure about what the ?android:attr/icon part exactly means, read http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/accessing-resources.html#ReferencesToThemeAttributes.
Is there something like a special folder like for icons with different sizes ? (up to my knowledge) NO
no such default folder exist which you can use for Themes.
You need to do it programmatically.
Save the theme info in your Shared Preferences.
and at time of loading the view you can set your desired themed drawable.
Is there a way to format all TextViews, Buttons or whatever with a theme ?
Like in CSS when i want to format all a-tags
a{
/some css here/
}
I want to do that in android via xml when I'm applying a theme to my application.
Any ideas ?Thanks
http://bartinger.at/
Update 1.0:
I want to create a theme that formats the text in all TextViews green and in all EditTexts red. So that i just apply the theme and I never have to worry about the style attribute!
Update 1.1:
So I found some that piece of code and I think that's a good beginning
<item name="android:textViewStyle">#style/MyTextView</item>
<item name="android:buttonStyle">#style/MyButton</item>
I think thats the answer to my question. But I have another one. I want to write my own ActionBar and wanted to know how I can apply a default style or default attributes (again without adding the style attribute in the layout xml :P )
I have a class
public class ActionBar extends LinearLayout{ }
and I'm gonna use it like that in my application
<at.bartinger.uil.ActionBar>....</at.bartinger.uil.ActionBar>
The ActionBar should have some default attributes (like height and width) and then adding some custom style attributes which could change from app to app (like background)
yes you can you can apply a theme to the whole application and then all your textviews will have that style.
Inside the styles.xml file you have to define your CustomTheme
for example:
<style name="CustomTheme" parent="android:Theme.Light">
<item name="android:windowBackground">#color/custom_theme_color</item>
<item name="android:colorBackground">#color/custom_theme_color</item>
</style>
you add something like text
"android:textStyle="myStyle" and specify the details in Mystyle
You can apply a style read more here.
for the action abr you should look here http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/actionbar.html
especially at the bottom it explains very well how to style the bar
I have a couple custom preference items -- one that displays a swatch of the currently selected color, and another one that displays a thumbnail.
I have a custom layout for these that matches up very well, and have found that I can make the text appearance match by using android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceLarge" as part of the TextView's xml. The problem is, while these generally look fine, they must not be the appearance the 'official' preferences use, since the colors end up wrong on some devices. In particular I'm porting my application to the Nook Color, and it uses a light grey background and black text color on the preference screen instead of black background/light grey text. My text color in this situation stays the same, but the rest of my layout is themed appropriately.
I'm really unsure what I'm supposed to do here to make my text match up with the 'official' theme. Should I be using obtainStyledAttributes and running though my layout to set things? The tutorials I've seen on using that so far have been really baffling, and it seems like there must be a textAppearance or style I can set in the XML to fix this.
You've to define your own application theme which inherits from the official theme you want. Actually, you can just define a theme MyTheme extending the Theme.Light for example.
Create an res/values/styles.xml file like that:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
<style name="MyTheme" parent="#android:style/Theme.Light">
</style>
</resources>
Then, you just have to apply your theme using the android:theme attribute of the application entity of your AndroidManifest.xml:
<application android:theme="#style/MyTheme">
[...]
</application>