Develop Reference

No Android status bar with relativeLayout

I am developing an app with Android Studio 2.2.3 and I'm facing a problem I did not find before: if I add an Activity from a template such as Basic Activity, the newly created activity will let the device status bar display
If I add instead an activity from the Empty Activity template, no status bar shows up any more.
Reading through the layout files, I see that the Basic activity uses a android.support.design.widget.CoordinatorLayout whereas the Empty Activity uses a RelativeLayout. I cannot find any other differences, neither in the manifest. I programmed some apps with Eclipse some time ago and the status bar was there, even with the RelativeLayout, as far as I remember.
Any suggestion?
Thanks in advance, regards
Edit:
Status bar does not relate with layout. It is about the theme defined in the styles.xml. Can you check which theme is applied your activity?
Thanks steve for your suggestion: the behavior is due to
Yet another question: keeping this no-actionbar theme, why is my textbox not aligned with the top of the screen, like this:
My activity layout is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:id="#+id/activity_main4"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
tools:context="it.pgsoftware.firebasepublisher.Main4Activity">
<TextView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="test string"
android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
android:layout_marginTop="0dp"/>
</RelativeLayout>
and with the Layout inspector I get the following UI structure:
The LinearLayout at the top has a 72dp top-padding which I can't find digging into the themes: any suggestion?
Thanks in advance, regards

Please check the android:appTheme="#style/AppTheme" option in the manifest file . Check the theme option in res>style.xml file . Copy the stylesheet and paste in comment to see.

Android Studio Rendering fragment issue

I am, at the moment, trying to make a google maps app using android studio.
Right now, everything is fine, except for one thing, when i go to the "Design" Tab, in the XML file i have this Redering message:
Rendering Problems A tag allows a layout file to
dynamically include different layouts at runtime. At layout editing
time the specific layout to be used is not known. You can choose which
layout you would like previewed while editing the layout...
And the main problem is that I cannot use any of the gui components in my layout, I searched about my problem and i understood that with this error, people couldn't see their map but they could put on textfields, widgets, layouts, etc.
But for me, my preview is completly frozen and i can't do any modification.
Picture of my android studio page.

As you can change the fragments dynamically with your code, android studio doesn't know which layout to show in design time. This is the reason of your error.
To specifically tell android which layout to show, add tools:layout="#layout/Your_layout_name" attribute to your fragment.
There is also a shortcut link below the error description which you have told. Just click on the link and android will add it for you and you will see the fragment in your layout with no rendering error messages.
For a detailed example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
tools:context="com.example.insane.fragmenttest.MainActivity">
<fragment
android:id="#+id/testFragmentID"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
class="com.example.insane.fragmenttest.WorkOutDetails"
tools:layout="#layout/fragment_work_out_details" /> <!-- This is the line you want to add. -->
</LinearLayout>

Try using Designtime Layout Attributes. http://tools.android.com/tips/layout-designtime-attributes
These attributes guide Android Studio on how to render run-time attributes in the layout editor.
I think you should include tools:showIn="#layout/activity_maps" in your the <fragment> part of your google_maps_api.xml

Just use this design for the fragment. This solved my problem. Also, refer to this link
<fragment
android:id = "#+id/ma"
android:name = "com.google.android.gms.maps.SupportMapFragment"
android:layout_width = "match_parent"
android:layout_height = "match_parent"
tools:context = "com.example.demomaps.MapsActivity"
/>

Yes I solved this easily..Simply ignore the message and click line that is showing below of the rendering messages.
Actually fragment contains layout inner and if its not include its showing warning that it must contains you can simply ignore this message below the warning then this rendering issue will be resolved.

Android Layout Editor Freaks Out on Question Mark

This is strange, yet I see it all the time as I have lots of reasons to display just a simple question mark in this app.
When editing with the Eclipse graphical layout editor, everything is fine...until I tell a TextEdit or a Button to display just a question mark. Here's my code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:orientation="vertical"
>
<TextView
android:id="#+id/test_title"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="#string/question_mark" />
</LinearLayout>
And the string is defined in res/values/strings.xml. The relevant line is:
<string name="question_mark">\u003f</string>
The error message I get is:
Missing styles. Is the correct theme chosen for this layout? Use the
Theme combo box above the layout to choose a different layout, or fix
the theme style references.
Couldn't find theme resource for the current theme
Change the text, and the error message goes away.
You can see that in my struggles, I'm even trying to use the unicode version of a question mark. And yes, \? doesn't work either.
Note that this only happens when the graphical layout editor is set to API 7 or greater.
Now the graphical layout editor displays the question mark properly, and the emulator and my phone display the question mark without any problems. I'm just annoyed with the error message taking up 1/4 of my screen for all my layouts (and obscuring other error messages that may crop up).
Any suggestions?

First, test this again on the ADT 21 release that shipped today.
If the problem continues, create a sample project that demonstrates the issue, and post it along with step-by-step instructions on the Android issue tracker.

Well, this is a really crappy hack, but it kind of works--if you stand on your head!
You can use the unicode \u00bf as in
<TextView
android:id="#+id/test_title"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="\u00bf" />
It's not a normal question mark, but it's close enough for a hack and gets that annoying error message out of your hair. And it might even increase the humor quotient of your app!
But PLEASE, if anyone out there has a real fix, post it!

Wow, I entered a bug report...[time marches on]...finally, I get a few emails as the Google team starts to look at it.
Today, I received some good news. It looks like the bug has been fixed (and they found a few related bugs, which have been fixed as well). The fix will be in the next release, Version 21.1 Preview 2. You can read the official details here.
Looking forward to it!

Android text overflow

I have one problem with text overflow.
I have searched all the topics about this problem and tried everything but none work for me(android:singleLine etc..).
To be more specific,text is showing in a single line,in textview,in listview even in alert dialog without custom layout.
The strange fact is that in alert dialog is showing only the first time,if i open again the dialog its ok.But the problem persists in lists and textviews......
The most strange part is that sometimes text is overflowing even in other AVD but later are OK,but in QHD and in my phone(HTC DESIRE) is overflowing.In Graphical Layout is looking fine in every configuration.
One layout of the many layouts that have problem is that:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:orientation="vertical" >
<ListView
android:id="#+id/ListView01"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="0dp"
android:layout_weight="1"
android:background="#android:color/transparent"
android:cacheColorHint="#android:color/transparent"
android:fadingEdge="none"
android:fastScrollEnabled="true" >
<!-- Preview: listitem=#layout/listview -->
</ListView>
</LinearLayout>
This problem appeared now,i didnt have it before...i dont know what is causing this because i have update ADT Tools,JDK and i replace my custom Action Bar with ActionBarCompat from ApiDemos.
What is should do?Why this is happening?Maybe is ActionBarCompat fault??
EDIT:
I have attached a screenshot of dialog overflow problem(1 of 2)

To be honest I suggest using a custom alert dialog since languages other than English is not properly measured. Imagine a box [a] where a holds a character, it gets measured on the width of that character. However android doesn't have the width of other characters other than English. I know this because I also work with other languages on android, it messes up my view so what I did was compromise with the text data. Sorry didn't see your view before posting my previous answer.

I found the solution.It was the ActionBarCompat from API Demos that make all these problems!!!After so many days trying to find out,was the ActionBar!!!!!!I reported the issue and i hope to fix that soon!The problem is that i changed
<style name="AppTheme" parent="android:style/Theme.Light">
to
<style name="AppTheme" parent="android:style/Theme.Holo">
in styles.xml and cause that bug.

Can't get theme attribute references to work in android

I'm very new (second day!) to android and working my way through the dev guide. There, it says that you can reference attributes inside the current theme from your XML by using the form "?...", for example
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<EditText id="text"
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:textColor="?android:textDisabledColor"
android:text="#string/hello_world" />
If I try to build this, I just get "No resource found that matches the given name (at 'textColor' with value '?android:textDisabledColor')
Given that this seems pretty basic stuff, and yet I can't find any references to similar problems elsewhere, I must be missing something obvious or misunderstanding something simple. Can anyone tell me what it is?

I don't think textDisabledColor exists anymore - at least not in the newer SDKs which is probably why it can't be found. Try textColorSecondary instead - e.g.
android:textColor="?android:attr/android:textColorSecondary"
Unfortunately I cant figure out if theres a specific disabled color. I came across the site below which seems to define the default theme: See this link for definition of default theme

try android:textColor="?android:attr/textDisabledColor"