Develop Reference

Android Tab underline color not changing

So I've basically looked into every resource I saw online on how to change the blue underline in the tabs, but all of the advice has not worked in my case.
I tried actionbarsherlock, appcombat, holo from Action Bar Generator but all the coloring did was color the top action bar, not the tab underline. And yes the files did compile and did not have any errors, but for some reason, it seemed like the underline would never be changed even through the generator.
I am confused on how to change the default blue underline on the tabs, and I would SO EXTREMELY appreciate it if there was a working custom style xml that you would share.
After going to Changing ActionBar tabs underline color programmatically result is still same :/
Screen shot after trying from other page: http://i.stack.imgur.com/EOUbu.png
Anyone able to help me out?

I've been struggling with this for days, but finally found the solution. I'm using AppCompat. You can set colorAccent in your theme and that will change the highlight color on your ActionBar. Like so:
<item name="colorAccent">#color/highlightcolor</item>
Here it is in context:
<style name="LightTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">
<item name="colorPrimary">#color/darkgrey</item>
<item name="colorPrimaryDark">#color/black</item>
<item name="colorAccent">#color/highlightcolor</item>
</style>

You need to define a custom theme for that, and then check the states to change the colour of the line. See if this answer helps you

Not sure if you are still pursuing this, but can you show what you did with Action Bar Generator? What Style entries did you add (in XML) and which drawables did you add?
I just went through the same process and it worked well with Action Bar Generator; just required a few lines added to the styles.xml, a new xml file in drawables folder, and then about 5 new image drawables into each of the resolution size folders (drawable-hdpi, etc).

Android XML Themes VS Styling

I've perused ALL of the questions here and countless tutorials on Styling and Themes for Android. The odd hierarchy between Themes and Styles is still a mystery to me.
My Manifest calls out this "Style" (android:theme, "#style/rforderstyle") [this is formatted from the manifest editor in Basic4Android] (not my choice but its what I have to use.).. however the manifest is still accessible should I need to.
I mention this because I've noticed that you can style a specific activity. I actually don't see a way to force have multiple "wigets" have their own "theme" while they all exist on the same activity.
Please advise if so then I my need to make my "little creations" as whatever "fragment" or "wigets".
What I'm attempting is a windows mobile app type form with a ton of User controls on it..so this set at the bottom happens to use a mid sized black text font.. but the control over here in the right upper is a different text size and color on & On & on ...
So regarding the style xml file, I've read that,,, its important that,,,, my parent be some all encompassing Android theme and I override individual "properties" in this section::
Could that mean that although I'm concerned with text size, since I have labels and editcontrols present the absence of a "parent" style that addresses these will cause me an error as I attempt to use this referenced parent style ??
How does a theme get into this mix...?
<resources>
<style name="rforderstyle" parent="#android:style/TextAppearance">>
<item name="android:textSize"> 21.0dp</item>
<item name="android:typeface">serif</item>
<item name="android:textColor">#FF9900 </item><!--#00FF00-->
</style>
</resources>
This is oddly confusing because the best examples reference layout files for the views but I don't really have layout files in Basic4Android I'm programmatically creating all of these views. If I don't need the depth of theme and style then fine but ...is the manifest supposed to point to a Style or a theme?

Android - Make a custom titlebar that uses the device's current titlebar theme

I'm trying to make a custom titlebar for my first Android application.
While I can find lots on the web about how to make them so you can change colours etc, I want my titlebar to look the same as the "standard" titlebar, but with a button that I can configure. This means copying the device's currently active themes to be able to style it in exactly the same way.
Not all devices simply use a gradient in the titlebar style, so adding a gradient (as suggested in other SO questions) doesn't really make sense.
Does anyone have any pointers how to read the style information?

try to extend an existing theme e.g.
create your own style which can ofcourse extend from existing from an existing theme. change the windowNoTitle to true.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
<style name="noTitleBarStyle" parent="android:Theme.Black">
<item name="android:windowNoTitle">true</item>
<item name="android:windowBackground">#color/darkGrey</item>
<item name="android:colorForeground">#ff3333</item>
</style></resources>
or try to do it runtime as discussed here
Android - change custom title view at run time
I hope this helps.

Android style descriptions

I tried changing the appearance of a spinner and I partly succeeded. I'm doing this via overriding parts of the theme. I managed to change the text size of the spinner item (i.e. the text size in the drop down button) with my themes.xml and styles.xml:
My themes.xml file looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
<style name="CustomTheme" parent="#android:Theme.Holo.Light">
<item name="android:windowActionBar">false</item>
<item name="android:windowNoTitle">true</item>
<item name="android:spinnerItemStyle">#style/CustomSpinnerItem</item>
</style>
</resources>
My styles.xml file looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
<style name="CustomSpinnerItem" parent="#android:Widget.TextView.SpinnerItem">
<item name="android:textAppearance">#style/CustomTextAppearance</item>
</style>
<style name="CustomTextAppearance">
<item name="android:textSize">30dp</item>
</style>
</resources>
However I cannot find the attributes that are responsible for the text appearance of the items in the dropdown list of the spinner. I tried dropDownItemStyle amongst other things. In my opinion the attribute names are not self-explanatory, so I wanted to know whether there is a documentation of what attribute does what in a style to find out which attributes to override. I found it very cumbersome to trace back all the styles used in a theme via the themes.xml and styles.xml of the platfrom and then try to find the right attributes via trial and error.
I know that one can change the appearance by passing layouts to the adapter, however, this is not really what I was looking for, since (as far as I know), you can only use inheritance in styles and not in layout xml files. If I created a custom layout for the adapter I'd have to create 9-patch images etc., which I think is a bit too time consuming in case I only want to change the text size.
Of course it's possible that I misunderstood the whole concept, since I'm new to Android ;)

You probably have found out the answer since you asked but for others looking at similar questions:
I do not know of a list of attribute names with good explanation of what they do (R.attr's page mostly gives information that is already in the name) but the way I do it is:
Start from the element I give to setDropDownViewResource(), in my case: android.R.layout.simple_spinner_dropdown_item and find.
Find its layout definition in \sdk\platforms\android-17 (specific platform version to avoid redundant results).
Get its style from the layout file. In this case: ?android:attr/spinnerDropDownItemStyle
We now have the attribute name we need.
It's better to do it that way rather than try to guess what attribute to use because you know which attribute the system itself use so it's very likely to be the correct one (unless there's a bug).
If I created a custom layout for the adapter I'd have to create
9-patch images etc.
Well, no, the layout determines what kind of GUI element you would have (a textfield, a spinner, an imagebutton, a custom element...), not how they are styled (nine-patch backgrounds, text colors...), so you still would have to mess with styles to get the right appearance.
For example, for visual consistency I ported the button, checkbox and spinner style from Theme.Holo to Gingerbread, yet I did not mess with layout, all I did was the aforementioned steps plus looking up the result (spinnerDropDownItemStyle in the above example) in themes.xml, which gave me the style name (e.g.: Widget.Holo.DropDownItem.Spinner).
Then I looked that up in styles.xml and imported it (and any parent*) in my project's styles.xml, searching and copying any Holo specific reference in my project and adjusting the namespace accordingly (add android: to attributes and replace ?android:attr with #style for what I copy to my styles.xml file).
So far I haven't had to mess with layouts at all (even the presence of radio buttons in spinner dialogs on Gingerbread is determined by an xml attribute: android:checkMark).
If a style has no parent attribute (like Widget.Holo.DropDownItem.Spinner) then its parent is the same style minus the last element (e.g.: Widget.Holo.DropDownItem)

Android preference title/summary text style

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>