I want to add a border to a borderlessbutton. However, if I create my own style with the parent borderlessbutton and I overwrite the background tag I loose the state change animation etc, as this is also defined by the background. I also cannot implement them myself as the native android drawables are not available as public and therefore not accessible. I do not want to have to copy the drawables.
Is it only possible to overwrite ondraw progammatically or is there an xml based solution i am missing?
(btw this is for a periodic table so this should not involve having an xml file for each button as there are about 100 of them)
thanks
stephan
The bulk of this comes from this article.
There is a 4 step process to doing something like this:
Create an XML file that contains the states.
Create an XML file (Or background) for each state
Create the style of the button
Add the button to your layout, and see what it looks like.
The single most difficult thing is the first step, so I'll show that one here. For the other ones, you can visit the site or do your own thing. Essentially, it will look something like this. Basically needs to capture all of the 4 states. This should be saved in the drawable folder, and the name of this is what your application will use for the name of the drawable.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item
android:state_enabled="false"
android:drawable="#drawable/loc_for_button_disabled" />
<item
android:state_pressed="true"
android:state_enabled="true"
android:drawable="#drawable/loc_for_button_pressed" />
<item
android:state_focused="true"
android:state_enabled="true"
android:drawable="#drawable/loc_for_button_focused" />
<item
android:state_enabled="true"
android:drawable="#drawable/loc_for_button_enabled" />
</selector>
An easy way would be to place your button within a separate layout, e.g. a LinearLayout and give this layout a background color and a padding of e.g. 1dp. This would render a "border" around the button. Note, that this is quite costly in regard of layouting, so do not use this method when you have lots of buttons.
The correct solution would be to create your one drawables for all states and build a statelist drawable with your drawables and assign this statelist drawable as your button's background. Actually it's not that much work, just have a look at http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/drawable-resource.html#StateList
Related
daily_event_selector.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item android:drawable="#drawable/daily_event_selected"
android:state_pressed="true" />
This is what I was using for ONE SPECIFIC button but I want to change this for different buttons while using the same selector
<-- <item android:drawable="#drawable/daily_event_normal" />-->
</selector>
So I have this selector and I want to use it on all my ImageButtons
P.S.: it's working
But I want to give a different background to each of my ImageButtons in their "normal" state.
I want to use this as a generic selector to have the same effect on all my Buttons while keeping the background different.
But since the selector is only specified (as per my knowledge) as
android:background="#drawable/daily_event_selector"
in the background property.
So, I can't seem to find a way to add background to the Buttons.
Any idea?
Use different selectors for different buttons.
The selectors will only differ in their normal state.
This is the smartest way I know to do that.
Another way would be to have only 1 selector, and change it's normal state in Java.
But this would really be other-than-smart.
Because you have to do some extra work in code (therefore, eventually slowing down the CPU).
I have an EditText control in my application and when it is focused (i.e. I'm ready to enter something) I want to apply shadow color to it. How can I do this?
Thanks,
#nagaraju.
You can use the Selector tag like Follows:
Create a New xml file and place it in your drawable folder and name it as shadow_color.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item android:state_focused="true" android:state_pressed="false" android:drawable="#drawable/ask_footer"/>
<item android:state_focused="false" android:state_pressed="true" android:drawable="#drawable/askfooter_hover" />
<item android:drawable="#drawable/ask_footer" />
</selector>
And then go to that xml in which your EditText is declared:
And write one attribute in editText
android:background="#drawable/shadow_color"
and you are done.
Use a selector for your background drawable and create your own nine patches.
does shadow color mean you want a shadow theme background for your view??
then, assuming that you are using xml layout,the GU interface version shown on eclipse allows you to select a particular theme for your view,which i think is what you want.
if you want to put it manually,
you must mention it in the android manifest
eg.
<activity android:name=".activity_name here"android:theme="#android:style/Theme.Dialog">//there are a handful of effects provided by SDK
</activity>
i suggest the graphical user interface method,its easy and you can see the effect as you select the theme
You can also check whether your EditText isFoucsed or not. And if true so change its background image to shadow like image.
If we use a ListView or an ExpandableListView the default background is #android:drawable/list_selector_background. I have an ExpandableListView which shows data grouped by date. I like the state list list_selector_background drawable and want to keep the behaviour for different states. But for the weekend (for some of the list view items) i'd like to define a custom background. But these items should still use the drawables for different states defined through list_selector_background.
I saw different not suitable answers. Most of them say i should define my own state list drawable.
The list_selector_background.xml defines, besides different drawable for different states, <item android:state_window_focused="false" android:drawable="#color/transparent" />
So i thought i define my own state list drawable and just change the transparent to my desired color. The problem is the drawables used for the states are not public. I really want to stay close to the android style so i don't want to write my own state list drawable with own drawables for states.
At the end i wrote a solution using a layer list drawable.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item
android:drawable="#color/DarkBlue"
android:id="#+id/background" />
<item
android:drawable="#android:drawable/list_selector_background"
android:id="#+id/list_selector_background" />
</layer-list>
This perfectly matches the desired behaviour with one exception :/. I have my custom background and the item reacts with drawable defined in list_selector_background for press events.
But somehow the focused state does not use the drawable defined by list_selector_background (<item android:state_focused="true" android:drawable="#drawable/list_selector_background_focus" />)
So i kindly ask if anyone can imagine why the focused state does not work? I am developing with API level 8. If you need any further information i'd like to post. Thanks
I've seen there are many different "themes" for the Android, depending on the device. For example on my HTC WildFire the highlight color is a "lime green", and that of the emulator is orange.
Is there anyway to know what are the main interface colors of the device in which my app is running?
So i can set (for example) TextViews background colors to match the device theme.
EDIT: You told me this is not possible so...
Is there any way to draw a simple rectangle with the highlight color? Maybe a void button?
Thanks!!
It's not actually a specified color, the drawables themselves are actually replaced on these modified Android skins that HTC, Samsung, etc. put out. So programmatically, there's no direct way to know what the color scheme will be. Your best bet would be to simply define your own drawables for your widgets with your own color scheme, or even reuse the defaults from stock Android, but copy them to your app's drawable folder, and set them into a StateListDrawable, and apply these to your widgets. This will ensure that you get the same color style on all platforms, with the disadvantage being that your app will not match the scheme of the rest of the skin. Depending on your app's layout, that will likely not be a problem, though.
I don't think that there is a way for you to get what the default highlight color is but you can certainly set your own by using the "textColorHighlight=#aarrggbb" attribute on your TextView within the layout.
As far as I know, there isn't a way (I don't see how there could be really). I guess you could have a few different "themes" in your own app and let the user pick one, to easily atleast somewhat match the rest of their setup.
You can use the #android:drawable/list_selector_background (or code form: android.R.drawable.list_selector_background) on your views. It has each of the default selector states. You can also create a selector yourself in the drawable folder like this (named something like default_highlight.xml):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item android:state_pressed="true"
android:drawable="#android:drawable/list_selector_background" /> <!-- pressed -->
<item android:state_focused="true"
android:drawable="#android:drawable/list_selector_background" /> <!-- focused -->
<item android:drawable="#android:drawable/list_selector_background" /> <!-- default -->
</selector>
And change any of those that you might want to customize. Then you use it like any drawable by setting the background of a View to that (default_highlight or whatever you call it).
I'm trying to detect the focus/pressed color for button and other elements.
This is needed because I'm developing new components and it's important that those look as part of platform.
Those colors are ORANGE on android sdk and GREEN on HTC SenseUI.
If I could detect that color my component will look as part of platform on both version.
Does anyone knows how to do this?
It's possible to create "selector" which uses custom image for default state and platform default for focus/selection.
To do this follow the steps:
1) create xml file with selector in "res/drawable" (e.g. "red_button.xml"):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item android:state_pressed="true"
android:drawable="#android:drawable/btn_default" >
</item>
<item android:state_focused="true"
android:drawable="#android:drawable/btn_default" >
</item>
<item
android:drawable="#drawable/btn_default_red" >
</item>
</selector>
2) from folder ".../android-sdk-mac/platforms/android-1.5/data/res/drawable/" take picture "btn_default_pressed.9.png" and change color as you like (I needed to change it to red and for this GIMP is enough).
3) place altered picture in "res/drawable" (e.g. with name "btn_default_red.9.png")
4) define button:
<Button
android:id="#+id/info_button"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="37dip"
android:layout_marginTop="1dip"
android:background="#drawable/red_button"
android:text="[Info]" />
That's all.
This is result:
alt text http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/1349/custombutton.png
I had this problem too. As already stated, the problem is that the backgrounds aren't simple colors, they're Drawables that could take on all kinds of appearances. However, I found a work-around that may help. If your custom component looks something like an existing one, e.g. a Button or ListView entry, you can just steal their background/selector and set that as the background for your custom component. E.g., in your custom component constructor:
setBackgroundDrawable(new Button(context).getBackground());
or for a background more suitable for list-like components:
setBackgroundDrawable(new ListView(context).getSelector());
You may want to optimise that code somewhat, but you get the idea.
Those aren't colors. They are a few nine-patch images out of a StateListDrawable. I am skeptical that there will be a reliable way for you to determine what the color is, one that will work across all devices and all versions of Android.
This is pretty much a duplicate of: Android ListView Selector Color
Also, why do you need to detect the colours? Just do nothing and your widgets will fit in to the platform's existing look & feel.
Or if you're writing a custom theme, just make yours inherit from android:Theme.