ActionBarSherlock becoming transparent when using windowActionBarOverlay - android

I'm using ActionBarSherlock for an Android app I'm making, and am displaying an image on one of my screens. On this screen, I want the actionbar to go away and come back as the user presses on the screen without the image being stretched. This part I have working, but to do so I created the following style and applied it to that screen. . .
<style name="DarkActionBar.ActionBarOverlay" parent="#style/Theme.Sherlock">
<item name="android:windowActionBarOverlay">true</item>
<item name="windowActionBarOverlay">true</item>
</style>
The problem is, now my action bar is transparent and I can't figure out why. If I change the parent of my style to Theme.Sherlock.Light.DarkActionBar, it is no longer transparent but doesn't look the same as Theme.Sherlock, so it will be inconsistent with the rest of my app.
I've also tried the following. . .
<style name="MyActionBar" parent="#style/Theme.Sherlock.Light.DarkActionBar">
<item name="android:background">#color/black</item>
<item name="background">#color/black</item>
</style>
<style name="DarkActionBar.ActionBarOverlay" parent="#style/Theme.Sherlock">
<item name="android:windowActionBarOverlay">true</item>
<item name="windowActionBarOverlay">true</item>
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/MyActionBar</item>
</style>
Can anyone tell me why the windowActionBarOverlay items are making my actionbar transparent, and what I can do to fix it? Thank you.

As the transparent ActionBar is a feature called "Actionbar Overlay", I think the problem is inside this line:
<item name="windowActionBarOverlay">true</item>
You may need to set it to false.
Please have a read of the following paragraph:
To enable overlay mode for the action bar, you need to create a custom
theme that extends an existing action bar theme and set the
android:windowActionBarOverlay property to true
Also please have a look at Overlaying the Actionbar on Android Developers

Related

Trouble setting action bar title textAllCaps

I'm trying to set the action bar title of my activity to all caps. This works well if done dynamically, but there's no effect when done through xml. Here's the code (The other attributes work normally, and size and color is being set).
<style name="mainActionBarTabTextStyle" parent="#android:style/TextAppearance.Holo.Widget.ActionBar.Title">
<item name="android:textSize">20sp</item>
<item name="android:textColor">#android:color/white</item>
<item name="android:textAllCaps">true</item>
</style>
Here's how I'm setting it to activity style :
<!-- Main screen action bar style. -->
<style name="mainActionBarStyle" parent="#android:style/Theme.DeviceDefault.Light">
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/mainActionBarBckgnd</item>
<item name="android:actionBarTabTextStyle">#style/mainActionBarTabTextStyle</item>
</style>
Is there any possible way to do this via xml. I've looked up at several threads on StackOverflow, but none of them seems to work for me. I'm testing this on a Kitkat device. Any help would be appreciated.

ActionBarSherlock Change Height?

I'm trying to change the height of my action bar to give it a more Material feel, but whatever I try never seems to work. Currently I have this:
<!-- Main Theme -->
<style name="WPTheme" parent="Theme.Sherlock">
<item name="actionBarStyle">#style/WPTheme.ActionBarStyle</item>
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/WPTheme.ActionBarStyle</item>
<item name="android:actionBarWidgetTheme">#style/CustomActionOverflowDropDownText</item>
<item name="actionBarWidgetTheme">#style/CustomActionOverflowDropDownText</item>
<item name="android:textColor">#android:color/white</item>
<item name="android:actionOverflowButtonStyle">#style/MyOverflowButton</item>
<item name="textColorPrimaryInverse">#android:color/white</item>
<item name="android:windowBackground">#drawable/black</item>
</style>
<!-- Action Bar Theme -->
<style name="WPTheme.ActionBarStyle" parent="Widget.Sherlock.ActionBar">
<item name="background">#drawable/ic_bar_top</item>
<item name="android:background">#drawable/ic_bar_top</item>
<item name="actionBarSize">56dip</item>
<item name="android:actionBarSize">56dip</item>
<item name="actionOverflowButtonStyle">#style/Widget.Sherlock.ActionButton.Overflow</item>
<item name="dropDownListViewStyle">#style/Widget.Sherlock.Light.ListView.DropDown</item>
</style>
Is there any other solutions out there? Or am I just making some bone-head error here that I'm not picking up on? Thanks!
Changing of height of actionbarsherlock is not the solution.
Use Translucent system bars
You can now make the system bars partially translucent with new themes,
Check this project https://github.com/jgilfelt/SystemBarTint
If you're creating a custom theme, set one of these themes as the parent theme or include the windowTranslucentNavigation and windowTranslucentStatus style properties in your theme.
Hope this helps get you started.
Move <item name="actionBarSize">56dip</item> and <item name="android:actionBarSize">56dip</item> to your main theme.
Also, if you'd like, you can check out my blog post on achieving a material style action bar on older android versions here. Though I haven't written it to be used with ActionBarSherlock, with some slight modifications, you should be able to get the same thing working.

Customize touch feedback in Android ActionBar

I have my style defined as follows:
<style name="actionBarTheme" parent="android:style/Widget.Holo.Light.ActionBar">
<item name="android:background">#drawable/button_style</item>
<item name="android:titleTextStyle">#style/actionBarTitleText</item>
</style>
And the actionBar is actually of the color defined in button_style (correctly working in other parts of the code). The problem is that the items are not working correctly (the background color is too light).
Any idea on how to solve this? Thanks
EDIT:
In the picture there is the touch-feedback that I have now. The button_style has another touch effect (a darker one) since this is almost invisible.
You can have this affect with actionButtonStyle
<style name="appTheme">
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/actionBarTheme</item>
<item name="android:actionButtonStyle">#style/actionButtonTheme</item>
</style>
and then place your button style as the background of that.
<style name="actionButtonTheme">
<item name="android:background">#drawable/button_style</item>
</style>
You will still need to set the background of your action bar but this only needs to be a colour or drawable image as that is all that will actually be used.

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>

ActionBarSherlock Back button color change ?

I am the using the ActionBarSherlock. I have the displayOption "homeAsUp" in my style.xml file. Now this shows a black arrow next to the title of the Activity. Since my theme is White on a blue blackground, i want to change the color of the black arrow, or maybe use a whole new icon resource in its place. How can i do this ?
Kind Regards.
Further to Eric's answer - I wasted a lot of time getting this right.
Remember that these items must go in the parent application theme, inheriting from Theme.Sherlock or similar.
<!-- CUSTOM APP THEME -->
<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.Sherlock">
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/AppTheme.ActionBarStyle</item>
<item name="actionBarStyle">#style/AppTheme.ActionBarStyle</item>
<item name="android:homeAsUpIndicator">#drawable/action_bar_ic_ab_back_holo_dark</item>
<item name="homeAsUpIndicator">#drawable/action_bar_ic_ab_back_holo_dark</item>
</style>
Do not put them in the custom Action Bar theme inheriting from Widget.Sherlock.ActionBar.
<!-- ACTION BAR THEME -->
<style name="AppTheme.ActionBarStyle" parent="Widget.Sherlock.ActionBar">
<item name="android:icon">#drawable/action_bar_logo</item>
<item name="icon">#drawable/action_bar_logo</item>
<item name="android:displayOptions">showHome</item>
<item name="displayOptions">showHome</item>
</style>
Be careful when you style ActionBarSherlock !
Here is an extract from the web site (ActionBarSherlock Theming):
Due to limitations in Android's theming system any theme customizations must be declared in two attributes. The normal android-prefixed attributes apply the theme to the native action bar and the unprefixed attributes are for the custom implementation. Since both theming APIs are exactly the same you need only reference your customizations twice rather than having to implement them twice.
So in your case you MUST define two item:
<item name="android:homeAsUpIndicator">#drawable/icon</item>
and
<item name="homeAsUpIndicator">#drawable/icon</item>
Then you are sure that ALL your users will have the same L&F

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