Develop Reference

Bind Keyboard to TextInput while it is hidden on Android Kivy

I have created a simple kivy app which is successfully running on windows. It takes barcode of products as input and proceed further. I have designed my own keypad for my application + It takes input from Barcode Scanner as well (Scanned barcode is being placed in focused TextInput). For this, I have set
Config.set('kivy', 'keyboard_mode', 'system')
which works perfectly fine.
Now, I want to run this app on android. On android, when a TextInput get's focus the android's keyboard becomes visible, which I don't want. I set TextInput property 'keyboard_mode' to 'managed' for this but it stops putting scanned barcode (from Barcode Scanner) in TextInput (as system keyboard will not be requested now).
What I want, hide the keyboard but it remain binded with focused TextInput, to access input from Barcode Scanner. I am stuck here, any help will be highly appreciated.
I am using: kivy==2.0.0, python==3.7.9 and buildozer to package application for android.

I have a few ideas but I first want to double check that you've put the Config.set('kivy', 'keyboard_mode', 'system') statement in the right place.
This needs to come before everything, i.e. the first two lines of your your main.py file should look like this:
from kivy.config import Config
Config.set('kivy', 'keyboard_mode', 'system')
from kivy.app import App
from kivy.core.window import Window
# etc.
The reason I ask this, is because writing Config.set() after importing App has no effect. On your computer I believe the default keyboard_mode is '' which is to simply choose the best option, which coincidentally is system. This can give the illusion of a working Config.set().

Add a settings page looking like in native app

I would like to create settings page which would look like the settings on native platform (eg. PreferenceActivity/Fragment with xml on Android).
I am used to design the settings page by creating simple preference xml on Android which handles the basic settings flawlessly, however I am unable to find the similar mechanism in Xamarin.Forms which would do the same thing for all platforms natively (with the gui part). I just only found the SettingsPlugin which handles "Create and access settings from shared code across all of your apps!".
https://github.com/jamesmontemagno/SettingsPlugin
I would really appreciate any recommendation on designing the settings pages.

You can use a TableView, which is an original Xamarin Forms User interface (without any plugin).
If you set his Intent="Settings" , you can display a nice list of configuration settings like SwitchCell, EntryCell, or a CustomCell.
Displaying these elements depend on the operating system and on the version of it. So it looks and feels different on f.e. Android 4.4 and different on Android 8.
For example:
<TableView Intent="Settings">
<TableRoot>
<TableSection Title="My settings">
<EntryCell Label="Name:" Placeholder="Enter Your First Name Here"/>
<SwitchCell Text="Show my name" On="true"/>
<SwitchCell Text="Update app automatically"/>
</TableSection>
</TableRoot>
</TableView>
Which will render something (not exactly that) like this: {source of img}

Mobile Web - Disable long-touch/taphold text selection

I've seen/heard all about disabling text selection with the variations of user-select, but none of those are working for the problem I'm having. On Android (and I presume on iPhone), if you tap-and-hold on text, it highlights it and brings up little flags to drag and select text. I need to disable those (see image):
I've tried -webkit-touch-callout to no avail, and even tried things like $('body').on('select',function(e){e.preventDefault();return;}); to no avail. And the cheap tricks like ::selection:rgba(0,0,0,0); won't work either, as hiding these won't help - selection still happens and it disrupts the UI. Plus I'm guessing those flags would still be there.
Any thoughts would be great. Thanks!

-webkit-touch-callout:none;
-webkit-user-select:none;
-khtml-user-select:none;
-moz-user-select:none;
-ms-user-select:none;
user-select:none;
-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0,0,0,0);
This will disable it for every browser going.

Reference:
jsFiddle Demo with Plugin
The above jsFiddle Demo I made uses a Plugin to allow you to prevent any block of text from being selected in Android or iOS devices (along with desktop browsers too).
It's easy to use and here is the sample markup once the jQuery plugin is installed.
Sample HTML:
<p class="notSelectable">This text is not selectable</p>
<p> This text is selectable</p>
Sample jQuery:
$(document).ready(function(){
$('.notSelectable').disableSelection();
});
Plugin code:
$.fn.extend({
disableSelection: function() {
this.each(function() {
this.onselectstart = function() {
return false;
};
this.unselectable = "on";
$(this).css('-moz-user-select', 'none');
$(this).css('-webkit-user-select', 'none');
});
return this;
}
});
Per your message comment: I still need to be able to trigger events (notably, touchstart, touchmove, and touchend) on the elements.
I would simply would use a wrapper that is not affected by this plugin, yet it's text-contents are protected using this plugin.
To allow interaction with a link in a block of text, you can use span tags for all but the link and add class name .notSelected for those span tags only, thus preserving selection and interaction of the anchors link.
Status Update: This updated jsFiddle confirms you concern that perhaps other functions may not work when text-selection is disabled. Shown in this updated jsFiddle is jQuery Click Event listener that will fire a Browser Alert for when the Bold Text is clicked on, even if that Bold Text is not text-selectable.

-webkit-user-select:none; wasn't supported on Android until 4.1 (sorry).

Contact Custom Field doesn't show up in HTC Sense

i wrote a custom syncadapter, which also added a custom field to the rawcontacts. Exactly how it is done in the SampleSyncAdapter or in this example with the last.fm-App. And it is working fine on the emulator.
The xml-file, which declares my custom field:
<ContactsSource xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<ContactsDataKind
android:mimeType="vnd.com.google.cursor.item/vnd.alien.mimetype"
android:icon="#drawable/icon"
android:summaryColumn="data2"
android:detailColumn="data3"
android:detailSocialSummary="true" />
</ContactsSource>
The code to add the custom field to the data-table of the contactscontract-provider:
mContentUri = Data.CONTENT_URI.buildUpon().appendQueryParameter(ContactsContract.CALLER_IS_SYNCADAPTER, "true").build();
Builder mID = ContentProviderOperation.newInsert(mContentUri)
.withValue(Data.RAW_CONTACT_ID, getRawContactId())
.withValue(Data.MIMETYPE, "vnd.com.google.cursor.item/vnd.alien.mimetype")
.withValue(Data.DATA1, mContactInformations.get("mID"))
.withValue(Data.DATA2, mContext.getString(R.string.profile_text))
.withValue(Data.DATA3, mContext.getString(R.string.profile_id)+" "+mContactInformations.get("mID"));
But when I run them on my HTC Desire with HTC Sense installed, I can't see this custom field anymore?!? Has anyone experienced the same problem?
Any hint to get my custom field visible is highly appreciated!
Cheers Ali3n

The default contact viewers do not show custom fields.
There are some 3rd party apps that do show custom fields, a free one (but ad supported) is here

Unfortunately I did not found a real solution for that. But two things reduce the problem:
This problem did only appear on my old HTC Desire. On my sisters HTC Sensation the custom-field shows up as expected (nice fail from HTC in the first try oO)
Even better is, that the intent that would be started via this custom-field also shows up in the QuickContactBadge, which is used by the native HTC Contacts-App even on my HTC Desires Sense. Therefore the user can invoke my activity via the QuickContactBadge on old Senses versions and in new versions he also has the ability to use the custom-field.

Titanium Appcelerator Android - Open default soft keyboard in number view

I have an address search field in my app. When this field gets focus I want to open the keyboard as in the following image.
It works fine for iOS when the keyboard type is set to Titanium.UI.KEYBOARD_NUMBERS_PUNCTUATION as in the following code
var search = Titanium.UI.createSearchBar({
barColor:'#c8c8c8',
autocorrect:true,
hintText:'enter address',
height:'43dp',
top:'75dp',
autocapitalization: Titanium.UI.TEXT_AUTOCAPITALIZATION_WORDS,
keyboardType:Titanium.UI.KEYBOARD_NUMBERS_PUNCTUATION
});
However on Android it appears as in the following image.
I am using Titanium mobile SDK 1.7.5

You should probably add :
softKeyboardOnFocus : Titanium.UI.Android.SOFT_KEYBOARD_SHOW_ON_FOCUS
Unfortunately, it may be overridden by the system. Try it on another Android system (3.0 for example) if the problem persist.