Develop Reference

Could someone please explain FLAG_ACTIVITY_PREVIOUS_IS_TOP

I have an Android app with multiple activities. The main activity communicates over a network and can launch or dismiss various other activities depending on commands it receives over the network. When an Activity is dismissed I don't want to finish() it, just move it down the stack so it's no longer the top activity. What I really need is a FLAG_ACTIVITY_REORDER_TO_BOTTOM but there is no such thing.
There's an intent flag called FLAG_ACTIVITY_PREVIOUS_IS_TOP and the name implies something like that but I don't understand the description:
"If set and this intent is being used to launch a new activity from an
existing one, the current activity will not be counted as the top
activity for deciding whether the new intent should be delivered to
the top instead of starting a new one. The previous activity will be
used as the top, with the assumption being that the current activity
will finish itself immediately"
Could someone please decode that for me, and if it's not what I want IS there some way to tell an activity to submerge itself below the previous one?

This isn't possible. The activities are stacked and you cant put one back under the other. It sounds like you may want to create a class that extends Android’s android.app.Application.
I found this tutorial online and it looks good. Good luck.
Extending Android's android.app.Application tutorial

You cannot move an activity below a certain activity into the android back Stack. The only way to move a activity in back stack is to open another activity on top of it. You can move an activity on top by creating a single instance of activity using FLAG 'singleTop' in this way your activity will be moved to the top of another activity and only a single instance of activity will be there in stack.
More information about activity back stack and Flags is available here.
Go through this information and all your doubts will get cleared about back stack.

Exit application programmatically

I have been searching for an answer but I couldn't find a proper one. The question is that I have a dialog themed activity on top of a normal activity. I would like to force the users to either read and click "OK" to the themed activity which will then transfer them to another dialog themed activity for some further questions or cannot enter the application. So, I would like to exit the application, on back press, and not just finish the themed activity that will reveal the content of my app. How is that possible?

If you start your dialog activity with startActivityForResult() you can send back the result RESULT_CANCELED from the dialog, and upon receiving this (in your main activity) you call finish().

finish() will do the perfect job for you ;)
but make Dialog not cancelable..
Edit (after problem description clarification):
As others said StartActivityForResult could work, with additional trick.
Because of the way you design your App (DialogActivity1->DialogActivity2), it might help to add following line in AndroidManifest file, for all your special dialog-look activities:
android:noHistory="true" or to set flag for intent Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NO_HISTORY before u start DialogActivityN.
Both lines (from manifest or code) will make this actitivies not to stay on android stack, so when your MainActivity get result back, it will be result from last DialogActivity and than depending on result recieved you can either finish() or continue with execution of MainActivity..
when u start activities like this there is no need to call finish() to destroy them, u just start new activity and they will be gone from stack. Of course, in your case, last DialogActivity u will start with StartActivityForResult() and as I explained in previous paragraph MainActivity will do something based on received results.
However making user goes through these dialogs several times at the beginning application, is not something I would consider good practice and it can make your user just give up and go for some less annoying app. (don't get this wrong, it's just my advice to rethink about concept)
Hope you will solve it ;) Cheers

If you know about ActivityforResult then way is easier for you, First you need to start the dialog activity with method startActivityforResult... and then when dialog activity get close by back button you have to close it by Set result. In OnactivityResult method of start activity have to detect the same and close the same if setResult is not as according. Hope you got the point.

Avoiding Blank Screen when it Raised from Intent in Android

I have an application that raises from service on scheduled time. In that service, i have displayed my Activity using Intent. It works perfectly. But, when i go back, the activity is finished. But, one blank screen is remaining there? How can i avoid this blank screen. I need my application's Activity instead of blank screen. Anyone Guide me.

#Špĸ remove this line: i.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
take a look at my post if you wish to open a dialog via your service: Creating global dialogs

I don't like that you finish an activity that you go back to. You have multiple of different alternatives:
Using fragments instead of activity intents.
Set flag to indicate the activity is done so it will close when you go back.
You could also try to work with the stack, look at this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/4038637/969325

Without seeing the code it is very diffcult to find out what is going wrong in your code but still I am making some effort to help you.
Add android:theme="#android:style/Theme.Translucent" to your activity tag in your manifest file and then try if it works or not.

Have you tried setting FLAG_ACTIVITY_NO_HISTORY in the intent you use to start the AlertDialog activity or launchMode="noHistory" in the manifest.
The AlertDialog activity may very well be the blank screen you're seeing as no content view is set and the only thing a user sees is an alert dialog so once the alert dialog is dismissed and the app goes back to this screen it would be blank.

Before press back button, you have to save the state of the activity and restore the activity while come front. This is easily done by onRetainNonConfigurationInstance() and getLastNonConfigurationInstance() method. Please refer this link.

android activity transaction style?

i need to know whether transaction style is possible or not in android , for example if i launch the main activity i need to go or switch over to second activity ,i need some animation like popup , pop for left..etc , for next activity view. whether it is possible or not?

Use Intend to go another activity.
Intent intent = new Intent(SourceActivity.this, TagetActivity.class);
startActivity(intent);
Further to understand about intend:
http://www.castlerockresearch.in/dev/2010/08/understanding-intents-and-intent-filters-in-android/
For Pop up animation see this link:
http://android-codes-examples.blogspot.com/2011/04/animated-customized-popup-transparent.html

you could use Intents for switching between 2 activities.
For the animation part please look at this How to provide animation when calling another activity in Android?
This could also be useful:
anddev.org/animation_on_new_intent-t1207.html
BR,
mybecks

Quit application button android

I would like to create a button in my game for the user. The button will quit the application.
Please can someone tell me if there is a way to do this.
Thanks.
Edit:
I have an activity which uses another activity with a class that extends Android.app.Application using set and get methods.
Simply using the back button switches the activities until it goes to the beginning.
I go in between these classes 20 times.
Thats why I needed a back button. But I guess there isn't so I will have to do it the long way and set everything back to the first state on quit. Thanks

There is not a way to make quit button. And there is good reason for that because the Android experience is having the back button do the closing. So you just to make the back button exit back to the home page. To do that you need make sure that your current activity is the only one oh the history stack. Then you can create a button that just calls finish(). Hope the detail explanation helps.

You probably want to mange the activity stack better.
If you look at Activity and Task Design Guidelines
it might help.
Setting the flags when you start each activity is probably the key, code such as
Intent i = new Intent(this, Whatever.class);
i.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_REORDER_TO_FRONT);
startActivity(i);
will limit the number of instances of 'whatever' to one only. ( A different flag might be more appropriate for you depending on how you want your app to run, read up about them all)

Try this:
public void quit(View view) {
if(Build.VERSION.SDK_INT>=16 && Build.VERSION.SDK_INT<21){
finishAffinity();
} else if(Build.VERSION.SDK_INT>=21){
finishAndRemoveTask();
}
}

If I read your full question, you are looking for a Reset button not exactly a quit button. I had a similar issue... the next and previous takes only one step back at a time. I wanted to go back to the very beginning. The way I acheived this is to have a class to manage the pseudocursor.. basically an int that represented which resource to pick (I used a singleton). In the main activity's Menu (android.view.Menu), I added a reset/go to beginning option. This will simply reset the pseudocursor. In my activity class's onResume(), I had the code to get the resource from the singleton. So no extra coding was required there.
Instead of having this option under Menu, you can always have a button in UI which does the same thing.