Android custom theme on 2.3, holo theme on 4.0 - android

I read http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2012/01/say-goodbye-to-menu-button.html but have some issues. For pre-honeycomb I want a custom title, for post-honeycomb I want the default. When I try to run my app on ICS
android.util.AndroidRuntimeException: You cannot combine custom titles with other title features
If I remove the custom title it works fine on all releases, just without the custom title.
in values-v11 I have themes.xml file with this content:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
<style name="customTheme" parent="android:Theme.Holo.Light">
</style>
</resources>
So my theme document says to use no custom theme basically.
If I remove
requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_CUSTOM_TITLE);
getWindow().setFeatureInt(Window.FEATURE_CUSTOM_TITLE, R.layout.title);
then the theme shows up correctly on ICS.
I cannot imagine that I have to check on coding level what API level I run and either request the window feature or not, that should be handled by the system.
Thanks, A.

Pretty similar to this question. I guess the action bar is considered a title feature, so turning it off gets rid of the exception.
I'm still a bit confused by the question though. You say you want the default title for post-honeycomb, but you can't use a custom title and also use the default actionbar. If you really want to do what you're asking (custom title for < 3.0, default actionbar for >= 3.0), then you'll need to check Build.VERSION.SDK_INT before calling window.requestFeature etc. That's how it's done in the actionBarCompat example that does just this sort of thing.

Related

Customizing Support Action Bar / Android

I recently started Android programming, all is good and dandy, but I've came across a problem that I couldn't find an answer to, and I really diged hard for 4 days so far.
My app uses support action bar, and to be specific "android.support.v7.app.ActionBarActivity". Long story short, I couldn't handle most of the stuff applicable to an Action Bar to this support one.
My app uses this support action bar by default due to setting up my mini sdk version to 14.
I want to be able to build an action bar from scratch, and customize it, since the default action bar is not responsive to my customization in styles.xml, etc.
I don't mind using Holo theme library instead of AppCompat.
So the question here, how can use Action Bar instead of Support Action Bar?
How can I extend my java class to use that instead of the support one?
Because none of the online customizing solutions are applicable to the support action bar.
A bit foggy description so I apologize for that.
Create a new project, and select the minimum API level as 15. When you do this, the appcompat-v7 library will not be required for this project as it is for projects with minSdkversion < 15. In this project, the classes android.app.ActionBarActivity and android.app.ActionBar will be used by default, i.e. the native AOSP classes and not the ones from the support library.
The following will let you have an ActionBar with custom background color as you want it, on API level 8 and above.
STEP 1. In your res/values folder, define an XML file theme.xml and add the following to it:
<resources
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools">
<style name="DefaultActionBarTheme" parent="#style/Theme.AppCompat.Light">
<item name="android:actionBarStyle" tools:targetApi="11">#style/MyActionBar</item>
<item name="actionBarStyle">#style/MyActionBar</item>
<item name="android:actionBarSize" tools:targetApi="11">#dimen/action_bar_wrap_content</item>
<item name="actionBarSize">#dimen/action_bar_wrap_content</item>
</style>
<style name="MyActionBar" parent="#style/Widget.AppCompat.Light.ActionBar">
<item name="android:background" tools:targetApi="11">#color/actionbarbgcolor</item>
<item name="background">#color/actionbarbgcolor</item>
<item name="android:height" tools:targetApi="11">#dimen/action_bar_wrap_content</item>
<item name="height">#dimen/action_bar_wrap_content</item>
</style>
</resources>
In the same folder make another XML file colors.xml and add the following to it:
<resources>
<color
name="actionbarbgcolor">#00FF00
</color>
</resources>
and to the existing file dimens.xml, add the last line:
<resources>
<!-- Default screen margins, per the Android Design guidelines. -->
<dimen name="activity_horizontal_margin">16dp</dimen>
<dimen name="activity_vertical_margin">16dp</dimen>
<!-- Optional, in case you wish to increase the default width of the Action Bar. -->
<dimen name="action_bar_wrap_content">55dp</dimen>
</resources>
In place of #00FF00 above, use the hex color code for the background color you wish to use in your ActionBar.
NOTE: The above will work assuming you are using the appcompat-v7 library. If not, then you'll have to use one of the Holo.Light themes instead of AppCompat.Light, and there will be other changes as well.
STEP 2. In your manifest file, you must add:
android:theme="#style/DefaultActionBarTheme"
to every <activity declaration if that Activity has the ActionBar.
Try this. It will work.
Zygotelnit answer works but you have to omit the ["tools:targetApi="11"] from item declaration otherwise it will give you an error for some reason.
On the other hand, I've found a much shorter and easier but not so optimized solution.While searching through the actionBar class and playing around here is the answer:
In your activity.java, go down to
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
Anywhere appropriate in that method, write the following code:
ActionBar actionBar = getSupportActionBar();
actionBar.setBackgroundDrawable(new
ColorDrawable(Color.parseColor("#D62D20")));
You replace the color code by any color code of your choosing. It's obviously a hex color code.

Custom Title bar with Holo Themes

Like a lot of people, I would like to use a custom title bar in android but also use the Holo theme. I've seen a lot of posts recommending using Theme.Holo.NoActionBar but it still gives me the same error as when I change my custom theme to use Theme.Holo. I want to resolve once and for all, is it possible to use a custom title bar like this:
requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_CUSTOM_TITLE);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
getWindow().setFeatureInt(Window.FEATURE_CUSTOM_TITLE,R.layout.custom_title_bar);
which seems to be the most common way to do it.
Well you can create another element layout which looks like title bar for you and in the current activity you can set requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE)
This way you get the holo theme aswell as custom title. This is commonly used practice in this scenario.
you can define parent="#android:style/Theme.Holo"
then just disable the windows action bar
like this
<item name="android:windowActionBar">false</item>
in theme.
It's working for me...

Android - apply theme from older API

I would like to deploy my app on APIs 8-17. However, for purely aesthetic reasons I would like to apply the default theme as it appears on api 8 as the theme for the app across all API levels.
For example, the older theme has an edittext that has an orangeish border around it, whereas the newer them uses a borderless blue line.
By limiting which APIs i deploy too I have been able to accomplish this but that isn't really a solution.
Does anyone know how this can be accomplished?
Thanks
Update
For whatever reason applying "Theme" as the theme did not force it to revert to the "Theme" theme, but instead left it as the default Holo. Using the answers below I simply called "Theme" as the parent in my custom theme (without altering any of its attributes) and set it as my application theme in the manifest. This solved it.
In your res/values directory, you can have a themes.xml file with:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
<style name="Theme" parent="#android:Theme">
</style>
</resources>
Your app theme will now subclass from default Theme instead of Theme.Holo and you should be able to get older theme on newer android versions as well.
If you're using the default theme, it will be different between the API levels. However in the styles, you can create a custom Theme, modify an existing Theme or give a different Theme to each different API of your choice.

Android - how to display the Action Bar using the default Theme.Light

I would like to use the default Android Theme.Light in one my activities.
However, when this particular theme is applied in my application Manifest file for the selected activity:
android:theme="#android:style/Theme.Light">
it hides the activity Action Bar.
What needs to be done in java or xml code to preserve the Action Bar, using this particular Light scheme ?
As an alternative, I have used the following default scheme:
android:theme="#android:style/Theme.DeviceDefault.Light">
That scheme does show the activity Action Bar correctly, however some of its objects are not displayed as preferred. In particular, my preference would be to display buttons and spinners as per Theme.Light, but preserve the other style formatting offered by the Theme.DeviceDefault.Light
I would greatly appreciate some tips on how to achieve the above scheme formatting preferences. (I am using SDK = 16).
Why not use "android:style/Theme.Holo.Light" ? is the same but has actionbar it was added in the newer apis
I think you should use Holo.Ligt theme. The old android Theme.Light is not even aware of action bar.
I have the same problem, I like Theme.light's controls, I resolved it like this:
1) define "Theme.Light.ActionBar" in project's styles :
<style name="Theme.Light.ActionBar" parent="#android:style/Theme.Light">
<item name="android:windowNoTitle">false</item>
<item name="android:windowActionBar">true</item>
</style>
2) in the manifest use it :
<activity
android:name="com.your.Activity"
android:theme="#style/Theme.Light.ActionBar" >
I hope that may help

How do I style the title text in ActionBarSherlock 4.0?

Hello i use ActionBarSherlock Version 4.0.0 and i dont know how to change/style the title text, under version 3.5 i used #style/abTextStyle.
but that doenst work in version 4.0.0.
ABS 4 brought with it some major improvements, one being the styling via XML. If you read the documentation on styling, you would know that as of 4.0 -
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.
<style name="Theme.Styled" parent="Theme.Sherlock.Light.DarkActionBar">
<item name="actionBarStyle">#style/Widget.Styled.ActionBar</item>
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/Widget.Styled.ActionBar</item>
</style>
From this we can see that the ABS item reflects the native exactly, obviously without the android prefix.
This in short means that styling the native and ABS actionbar is now much simpler and to do any styling you should follow the standard Android docs on this, and then declare the styling you want like the example above (i.e. declare twice, once for native once for ABS).
This question ActionBar text color has some examples for what you want in its top voted answer, and if you want to be comforted: it was commented on by Jake Wharton who is the genius behind ABS.

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