As Android live wallpapers are becoming more prevalent, and developers are doing more with them, a question coming up more and more is how to hide the home screen icons temporarily while the user interacts with the wallpaper.
For this to work, the icons would have to be removed temporarily – not just made invisible, since a tap on an invisible icon would still run the app.
Also, it would be ideal to have a universal solution that works across customs launchers, not just the Android stock launcher.
This question was already asked on StackOverflow, and the answer was that you cannot do this. But this is clearly not correct, as there are at least two programs on Android Market that do exactly this: Show Off (Your Live Wallpaper) and The Cleaner (Show Wallpaper)
Is there a way to hide Android home screen icons, and then later put them back in place?
You can launch an activty which backgroung will be your live walpaper, and finish the activty upon touch... Just a thought...
Edit:
1st comment answer:
Preventing the delay:
You should be more "gentle" in the onCreate() method...
Try creating the minimum as possible in the onCreate(), like, just displaying the basic background...
in the end of the onCreate function, set an alarm (i.e. by AlarmManager) to call some BroadcastReceiver/Activity after half a second or so (with AlarmManager) to set the rest of the live wallpaper graphics... that way you don't have to worry about the delay.
This would have to be a completely new launcher. This is not possible without this I don't think. Sorry. However; to be absolutely sure though you'd have to look at the Launcher2 package in the android source and look through files like Homescreen.java. I'll look into it later on 2.3.3 for you and see what I find.
Try using the zoom gesture as you would to zoom in on a web page (reverse pinch). And you guessed it, the opposite makes everything come back.
Related
I was wondering if there was a way I can have part of my screen in android constantly display something, even something as simple as a piece of text or an image. I am fairly familiar with Android Development, so if there is a way to make an app that does that, it'd be great.
To be precise, I want the top third of my screen to stay constant, and the bottom two-thirds to work normally such that I can do anything I can normally do
Edit: I want the top third to display the constant text/image even if I exit the app. A widget is a good idea. I'll look more into that.
I was wondering if is it possible attach a widget to the main Android background/wallpaper/desktop?
I want develop something like a clock, actually It's a very simple widget that have three buttons. This is quite different from another desktop-widgets-like, all the widgets that I've seen are like a customization of the Android wallpaper, or a customization of the Android unlocker, but this is rather different.
If it is possible, do you know some sample code source?
Not sure what "background/wallpaper/desktop" really means, as "background" is too wide term, "wallpaper" may be either static bitmap or live wallpaper, "desktop" means nothing on Android (did you mean Launcher by any odd chance?). If you meant live wallpaper, then you cannot have full functionality in Live Wallpaper you have on Launcher, but if "three buttons" means you want to allow user to tap certain area and react on this, then it should be not a big problem - you can use onTouchEvent() to receive taps from user and act accordingly. If you meant Launcher then well, "yes". For any other options "no" or "most likely no"
I am building an Android app that uses the phone's camera feature. I know there is a way to build a custom camera view. Instead, I am choosing to use the camera app via an intent and not build my own camera view. I want to disable/make disappear the pause button while taking a video and have just the stop button. I looked up the Camera API Guide at www.developer.android.com but it doesn't talk about how I could do this. Does anyone know a way to do this?
I doesn't think that this is possible. Using Intents is just a way to tell Android "hey, I'd like to take a video (photo, see MapView, etc). Can you do it for me?". It may trigger one or MORE Apps listening to that Intent, depending on what apps the user has Installed. Usually you can only choose very basic options via Intents, i.e. take video/picture or tell the MapView at which Position it should show up. These options usually also appear inside the App during normal use. I never see a "CustomCamera-App" that hasn't a pause Button, or where one is able to deactivate it inside the menu. Therefore the chances that it is possible to set that special option tends to zero.
I was recently told to convert my flash app over to a tablet. So I only just started coding in the java language.
I am going to have a default picture set as the background. However, if the user wishes they would be able to change the the background to a picture contained on their tablet. So it would change the background at that point and load it at that point when started next time. If they later delete the picture, it would go back to the default.
To top it off, my boss who knows nothing of coding thinks it would be easy for me to "allow those cool live backgrounds in a similar fashion" ... As if learning a new programming language was not difficult enough...
Any help or pointing to various tutorials/resources that I would have to merge to effectuate this would be greatly appreciated
Jc
For live wallpapers, you can only show the current live wallpaper that the user has global selected for the device (or static wallpaper if that is what they selected). This is done by setting the theme of your activity to Theme.Wallpaper. For example, in onCreate() do Activity.setTheme(android.R.style.Theme_Wallpaper) or doing in your manifest
I'm writing my first Android game, and though the game itself is working well, I'm not too sure about some of the Android integration aspects of it. Specifically:
Should I provide an in-game volume control?
Should I hide the status bar?
Is the Menu button generally used to pause the game, or should I provide an on-screen control for this?
etc.
Basically I just want my game to do everything the "standard" way. I don't want to frustrate users. Is there some resource (official or not) that lists recommendations for such things? Alternatively, can anyone give me a few important guidelines?
There are no official guidelines how to do this, but some 'Android common sense' would be advisable.
As usual, there is more than one way to do anything, but most of the apps seem to follow the following principles:
full screen games (especially ones in landscape mode) seem to hide the status bar most of the time
you should override the menu button, so it does not get pressed accidentally, but provide a quick way to leave the game
back button usually pauses the app
you do not need in-game volume control since all of existing android devices include a volume rocker, but make turning the volume off available as soon as the game (splash screen) starts, preferably give the person a few moments to turn it off before the music start (a 'would you like to turn the music down?' dialog would be nice)
an (as usually on android) don't count on anything and specify special game requirements (trackpad support, min screen size, ...) in the manifest file
hopefully you can find some more resources online