I need to write an app for testing purposes, which shall stay in foreground regardless which other application is currently activated. That means i need to allocate a small area of the screen that shall be usable for my app. Does somebody know a way how to achieve this?
Sounds like you want to to create something like statusbar. I'm not sure if you can do that without using some internal android API(for which you'd need to recompile android and build your own custom ROM).
Now you can look at what android does when it creates status bar here http://www.google.com/codesearch#uX1GffpyOZk/packages/SystemUI/src/com/android/systemui/statusbar/StatusBarService.java check the addStatusBarView method. There some internal stuff there like WindowManagerImpl. You might be able to achieve something like this by using dialog or regular activity and using getWindow() to get its window and setFlags to mess with its flags in order to make them behave more like status bar. I'm not sure if this would give any results..
If you don't have a lot of info to display maybe it would be much easier to use notification in the status bar..
Look at this thread it looks like a similar problem was addressed there.
Related
[SOLVED = I can't add to it, it's based on the active ROM]
Sorry for the vague questioning, I wasn't sure quite how to create it.
I'm wanting to add toggle buttons, or at least other elements into this part of android;
I can't find any documents on how to add to this element of Android, and I'm wondering if we actually can? Does anyone know what this element is even called and can link me to the appropriate android doc?
Thanks!
This is an application that ships with Android, hence you cannot change its behavior. It has a predefined set of elements that can be present on it. If you want to create a custom version of it, you will need to create a custom ROM.
This looks similar to the quick settings screen on my Samsung and it created by the phone manufacturer. You could create a custom ROM, but I don't think this is what you really want.
The closest I think you can get is the notification bar, which can use a custom layout:
Change Notification Layout
Also Take a look at the WatchOn app, which has a relatively complex control embedded into the notification screen:
I would like to display a message to the user for some asynchronous event. For example for an alarm expiration. I would like to display a popup or dialog that is displayed over any activity is the foreground at the moment (and this can be some other application activity) leaving the current activity in the backgound.
Is there a way to do so in Android?
First off, you will be told that this is a bad thing to do, that it is against the Android way of doing things. Users do not like this. And that the Notification area is much better way to do this.
That said... there are ways to accomplish this...
A Toast will display no matter which activity is on the screen. So you could set up a background thread (or better a Service) that will display your information in a Toast. This might be good enough for you.
You may find it useful looking at some Toast source code here.
Also here is a nice page on how to create a custom Toast layout by replacing the default View with one of your own. (I have not done this, but it looks quite interesting):
Custom Toast Alert on androidexample.com
The alternative is much more difficult, and is to display a System Overlay window. Unfortunately you have to do quite a lot of work to get these set up properly.
Here are a few related questions that I used to get it working:
Creating a system overlay window (always on top)
System overlay android 4.0
How to create a system overlay in Android which allows interaction with the windows below it?
Each of these has links to many others - there are loads of System Overlay questions on here.
But things to remember:
In the old days, you could put a system overlay on top, and send
touches through to the activity below. This is no longer possible,
and so a lot of the answers are now out of date.
You may need to
play around with the flags in the provided examples to get exactly
the effect you are aiming for. Not all the examples use the same
flags, so there are some subtle differences in how each solution
works.
Then again, I also believe that the Notification area is a much better UI pattern to use, so I do recommend you try that first. It is easier to do, and most of us expect that type of behaviour rather than a pop-up.
The problem with a pop-up, is that it might interrupt a movie I'm watching. Or a game I'm playing.
Yes, i had created two dialog for income event for background and foreground
I want to write myself an Application to hide the time in the notificationbar and i´m lookin out for some way to do so!
I want it to look like this for example, just not visible:
Do you have any hints how i can accomplish the time in the notificationbar gone?
Thanks in advance, i know this isnt a very specific question but i´dont look for a specific answer either!
EDIT: Currently i´m using the app super status bar to hide the time but unfortunally it delivers a lot more than i want. Within the alternative status bar i just set the fontcolor of the time to black. When this app can do it there has to be some kind of way to accomplish the time not visible or gone right!?
You certainly can't accomplish that with a widget, and you can't do that without actually modifying the OS itself, and building a custom ROM. There is no way for you to override the system part of the notification bar as a third-party application.
I am very new to android development. I wanna create a app thats like a ticker on android tablet. But when the user clicks on any other application, i still want my ticker to be visible and the other app to resize and occupy rest of the screen only.
Somebody told me that this is not possible. Is it the case ? Anyone know of any similar app ? or somehow plz get me started with this ?
Thanks for your help.
Cheers
It is not a good idea steal screen space from other applications. If your ticker is floating above like modal window, it would probably block some views for the user.
If your app is competing for the screen space, the other app would probably look ugly.
My suggestion is that you rethink your application, and follow the user interface guidelines.
Good luck!
I believe this isn't possible. Even if, it isn't a good idea. If you want something like that consider creating a widget or some kind of notification. That would be the best and a lot of applications use notifications like that.
what you want to do is creating a system type of window,such as PHONE_WINDOW,make your app flowing on the up-layer of other normal window.
You may read this post
http://www.apkbus.com/android-77789-1-1.html
I'm just mucking around with Android tablet stuff in 3.0. I have fragments set up to do the equivalent of UISplitViewController for iPad. Anyone know what the best solution to get something like the iPad UIPopOverController is?
I'm thinking the options are either a separate dialog or something in the Action Bar ...?
I haven't actually seen any Android tablets running 3.0 so not clear what the standard will be ...
Many thanks in advance
This may not be exactly what you are looking for because I'm not all that familiar with UIPopOverController but I think you can accomplish something similar using a Toast with a customized layout.
I would take a look at Creating Toast Notifications and see if it works for you.
Depending on the functionality needed it might work, otherwise you might need to look into trying to generate a modeless dialog with a custom layout.
As for your other question, yes options are generally stored in a separate activity within your application and following Honeycomb design the options activity would be accessible from the Action Bar and the options itself could be a fragment.
Its nothing official but I would crack open the source code to the contacts app for 2.0+ They emulate the popover UI using an Activity in a pretty creative way. It might be a little over kill as it was designed to be usable by any application not just itself. But it should help give you a nudge in the right direction.
Also depending on what the behavior you are looking for exactly a combination of fragments and action bar could be the way to go, but its not going to be as easy as iOS.