I want to make my application displayed only in portrait orientation, so I have put android:screenOrientation="portrait" in the Activity tag in AndroidManifest.xml, and have put setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT); in the Activity's onCreate method.
This works to lock the orientation to portrait, however, when the Activity starts, it shows itself once, then shows itself again, so you see a sort of flash. I can confirm that onCreate is being called twice as well.
This flash is causing further force closes later in my application.
How can I eliminate this flash?
Edit
I had a splash screen displaying before the activity I had described. It was being run twice, and therefore ran this activity twice (via an Intent) twice. I fixed this issue by checking if this activity had already been stared using an intent in the splash screen class, and it had, not to run it again. The fix was more of a workaround than a fix, but I hope it helps people.
I believe that using the Activity's configChanges attribute (in the manifest) should solve your problem. ConfigChanges attribute documentation
However, you are just going around another problem. What you really should address is why is that provoking FC? There is absolutely no reason for that to happen so you also should solve that problem. More info in handling runtime changes.
Please note: using the first approach is acceptable to address the performance/UX issues though.
Just in case you wonder why onCreate is called twice, once I got into this problem and I think that it was related to having the orientation fixed and then having another activity being created but in a different orientation. Before the second activity was started, the former activity changed into the orientation of the latter. And remember that keyguard is also an Activity! I'm not sure if this happens for this reason though.
don't put : "setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT);".
Just let the AndroidManifest do his job. I thing what you did is :
Tell your App to go only in Portrait mode
Tell your Activity to be in Portrait mode, wherever it was already like this or not (The flash have to come from this).
I could be wrong.
Related
I got an app that is locked in landscape orientation. Now, when I change the devices settings to set its orientation locked to portrait, some problems occur.
After a bit of testing, it seems that for each Activity that is started, the onCreate is called twice.
First time for portrait orientation, second time as an orientationChange with orientation set to landscape. The first orientation is wrong, and probably has something to do with the device being locked to portrait.
In the app, the orientation is forced to landscape programmatically (using setRequestedOrientation), and I prefer to keep it that way, if possible, for various reasons.
Any ideas about how to avoid this behavior?
Thanks in advance!
Ok, I found a solution myself.
After a lot of searching and digging in the code, the solution was fairly simple.
All I had to do was add:
android:configChanges="orientation|screenSize"
... to all my Activities in the manifest file.
This tells the app that I will handle configuration changes myself in the code. Instead of doing this, I didn't add any handlers for these config changes. This way, my Activities aren't recreated when the orientation change happens at the creation of those Activities. I can do it this way, because my app is locked in a certain orientation.
This post came closest to my problem, but it's solution didn't work for me:
Android: set activity orientation BEFORE onCreate, but not in manifest (HDMI plugged in issue)
This post gave me the answer:
http://www.acnenomor.com/1053172p1/oncreate-were-called-twice-after-implementing-setrequestedorientation
Try setting up the orientation directly in the manifest instead of programmatically. Under your activity tag in AndroidManifest.xml add android:screenOrientation="landscape".
This should force the activity to be directly created in the correct orientation.
I have stumbled on a problem, that, when the screen turns off while being in LANDSCAPE orientation, certain devices "rotate" the app back to PORTRAIT position (because the lockscreen is PORTRAIT only or something like that). I did a little research before posting this, and most popular work-around is to modify app's configuration change process to prevent activity being recreated after the configuration has changed.
But disabling activity recreation is not a solution for me, because my app supports both orientations with sepparate layout's etc.
So i would like to find out, is it possible to disable the configuration change only in special cases (Screen turned off and orientation is landscape)? Or is the right way to override onConfigurationChanged() then manually manage activity recreation inside that function (i guess simply setting different layout resources when orientation is changed simply wont cut it)?
Or is the right way to override onConfigurationChanged() then manually manage activity recreation inside that function?
Yes to an extent.
You cannot set the configChanges attribute programmatically. I guess it's to do with the way an Activity is created. They're created from the XML first and then the overridden methods in your activity implementation are invoked. There's nothing in the API that lets you change the configChanges attribute.
Now in your case it doesn't sound like you need to. If you support both orientations, then if the user locks the device and it rotates back why does it matter? From a UX perspective we know it's in portrait mode again. So should your app when it opens back up.
I have alternative layouts in my layout-normal-land and layout-normal-port folders and they are correctly invoked by the system according to if I hold the device in land or port at start. My problem is, when I rotate the device AFTER I have launched the app, it tries to somehow adapt the already displayed view to the new situation, creating a mess.
How can I tell the system it should switch to the alternate layout during execution?
Have been experimenting around and found that when I dont have android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation" , oncreate gets called again, which gives the correct layout, but its not what I want to have. I dont think this is normal, is it? Maybe a question of bug in Android (2.3.3.)?
By including
android:configChanges="orientation"
in your manifest you are saying you want to handle orientation changes yourself. You should remove it if you want the system to handle it for you.
The automatic handling works extremely well. You should only override it if you have a specific reason for doing so.
In normal operation (without the above manifest entry), an orientation switch causes the current activity to be closed and then re-opened in its new orientation reloading all resources and layouts from the currently active resource folders. The process follows what is known as the "Activity Lifecycle".
If you include the above manifest entry, you are saying, "I will handle all changes myself. Do not close my activity" so it is then your responsibility to remove all unwanted layouts from the activity and replace them with the layouts you now require for the current orientation.
Do you already use an OrientationListener?
If no:
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/OrientationEventListener.html#onOrientationChanged(int)
the listener should detect orientation changes.
Then you call setContentView (R.layout.name_of_layout) in your Activity class.
Hope this helps.
do you have android:configChanges="orientation" in your manifest on that activity? That will prevent android from automatically changing your layout.
May be obvious, but:
Within the res folder make sure you have the folders labelled "layout" and "layout-land".
Portrait and landscape .xml files must have the same filename.
I have run into the same problem, and I did not have android:configChanges="orientation" in my manifest.
However I did have [Activity(ConfigurationChanges = ConfigChanges.Orientation)] in my mainactivity. That seemed to be another way to override the automatic orientation handling.
I was wondering why not use android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation" in every (almost every ;)) activity?
Goods:
no need to worry about your activity been rotated
it's faster
Not so nice:
need to change your layouts if they are depending on screen size (e.g. layouts with two columns or so)
Bad:
no flexible way to have different layouts on different orientation
not so good when using fragments
But if we don't use different layouts, why not?
Quick Background
By default, when certain key configuration changes happen on Android (a common example is an orientation change), Android fully restarts the running Activity to help it adjust to such changes.
When you define android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation" in your AndroidManifest, you are telling Android: "Please don't do the default reset when the keyboard is pulled out, or the phone is rotated; I want to handle this myself. Yes, I know what I'm doing"
Is this a good thing? We shall soon see...
No worries?
One of the pros you start with is that there is:
no need to worry about your activity been rotated
In many cases, people mistakenly believe that when they have an error that is being generated by an orientation change ("rotation"), they can simply fix it by putting in android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation".
However, android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation" is nothing more than a bandaid. In truth, there are many ways a configuration change can be triggered. For example, if the user selects a new language (i.e. the locale has changed), your activity will be restarted in the same way it does by an orientation change. If you want you can view a list of all the different types of config changes.
Edit: More importantly, though, as hackbod points out in the comments, your activity will also be restarted when your app is in the background and Android decides to free up some memory by killing it. When the user comes back to your app, Android will attempt to restart the activity in the same way it does if there was some other configuration change. If you can't handle that - the user will not be happy...
In other words, using android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation" is not a solution for your "worries." The right way is to code your activities so that they are happy with any restart Android throws at them. This is a good practice that will help you down the road, so get used to it.
So when should I use it?
As you mentioned there is a distinct advantage. Overwriting the default configuration change for a rotation by handling it yourself will speed things up. However, this speed does come with a price of convenience.
To put it simply, if you use the same layout for both portrait and landscape you're in good shape by doing the overwrite. Instead of a full-blown reload of the activity, the views will simply shift around to fill the remaining space.
However, if for some reason you use a different layout when the device is in landscape, the fact that Android reloads your Activity is good because it will then load up the correct layout. [If you use the override on such an Activity, and want to do some magical re-layout at runtime... well, good luck - it's far from simple]
Quick Summary
By all means, if android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation" is right for you, then use it. But PLEASE be sure to test what happens when something changes, because an orientation change is not the only way a full Activity restart can be triggered.
From my point of view: If the layout is the same in both landscape and portrait mode - you might aswell disable one of the two in your app.
The reason why I state this is that I as a user expect the app to provide me with some benefit, when I change orientation. If it doesn't matter how I hold my phone, then I don't need the choice.
Take for instance an app where you have a ListView, and upon clicking a ListItem you want to be shown a detailed view for that item. In landscape you would od this by dividing the screen in two, having the ListView on the left and the detailed view on the right. In Portrait you would have the list in one screen and then change the screen to the detailed view when a ListItem is selected. In that case orientation change makes sense as well as different layouts.
I don see why.... occasional restarts are ok in my opinion... configChanges handles most cases for me... well maybe in some types of applications this can be problem but it depends really on type of app and how you restore state when app restarts... When one of my app restarts user is logged back and last activity opens by my code and user jus loses some steps to go back where he was but not big deal.. In other some state is always persisted and some state is always restored on restart. When activity restarted it had to be that app have not been used or something... so no problem at all... In game for example this can be problem maybe or in some other type of app I don't know...
I say that when you do it this way applications just works fine under normal circumstances. And code is much more readable without ton of logic needed for saving and restoring where u just can make new bugs and have to maintain it all the time... sure if android gets out of power and kill you application window it lose the context and starts again, but this happen just in special situations and on newer devices I belive this is more and more rare...
So kill me, but I use this across applications quite successfully...
android:configChanges="locale|keyboard|keyboardHidden|orientation|screenLayout|uiMode|screenSize|smallestScreenSize"
But I understand that for some special kind of applications it may be not good way but most of apps can live with this just OK.
Yeah I think pausing will make it quicker than releasing the player. Still have the pause though.
Have now found a solution that won't pause the song.
State in the manifest that you will handle the config change for screen orientation and then use the onConfigurationChanged method to load the layout file. By doing this in logCat I can see onPause, onCreate & onResume aren't called, and therefore the song isn't paused.
update the manifest to handle the orientation.
android:configChanges="orientation|screenSize"
add this code
#Override
public void onConfigurationChanged(Configuration newConfig) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
super.onConfigurationChanged(newConfig);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
}
This is probably a beginner question, but I've already tried looking for an answer and couldn't find one. I was testing an Android app I made on my phone and it was working fine until I switched from portrait to landscape, just to see what would happen. It pretty much made the app go back to the home page, so I'm guessing it calls onCreate() every time the orientation changes. Is it possible to prevent an orientation change from restarting everything, and just have it switch all the views to fit landscape or portrait mode?
This question has been answered thousand times, but ...
You should add in you Manifest.xml for your activity android:configChange="orientation"
and then override onConfigurationChanged(newConfig) method and do not add anything inside, since you are telling you app to do nothing when config changes occur.
Whenever the orientation changes onCreate() method gets called again and again.
Inorder to prevent that add android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden|screenSize"
to the Manifest file, and then override onConfigurationChanged() method.