I am looking for a way in Android how to place some transparent buttons over a (background) image so I have good control to position the buttons and they stay were they meant to be also if the screen is much larger.
As you can imagine the image contains also the button art...
The best thing would be if I could position the buttons by using percentage, but sadly this is not possible in Android.
This is my current base of the code:
<RelativeLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:orientation="vertical"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:background="#drawable/art_main_background" >
As an alternative, I could also extract the button art and place them over the image, but this would lead to the same problem, how can I control the position if the buttons are not in a 'linear' kind of order, i.e. rather random.
You should definitely make the button art separate pieces, and then place them in as ImageButtons. You can use a FrameLayout to stack them on top of the image (actually, if it's set as a background image, you shouldn't even need the FrameLayout) but I think you'll have more problems than that if I understand you correctly.
Are you trying to make a single image as your controls, and just map buttons to specific positions? Considering the number of variations in screen resolutions and sizes, this is just a bad idea on Android. Consider rethinking your layout to be a bit more flexible. If you do need absolute positioning, you can use a FrameLayout, and just specify left and top margins to position them, but keep in mind what might fit perfectly on one resolution won't necessarily fit into another properly.
If you can post a sample of what you've got in mind, we might be able to give you some ideas.
Related
I am trying to create an android app where I have a single relatively big button in the middle (the light blue in the picture) and it is surrounded by other smaller buttons as shown in the picture (some of small buttons might be visible or invisible based on some criteria).
I started with the RelativLayout setting the big on in the center and making the rest placed in relation to it, but it is a miss and the central button get shifted and doesn't stay in the center. I tried placing them in FrameLayout and used margin to adjust their locations, that worked the best however, the spacing changes on different screen resolutions.
So what is the best way to achieve such layout that will look consistent on any device?
Android's Percent Support Library allows you to use proportions to lay out your views, which may allow you to get closer to your goal.
http://developer.android.com/tools/support-library/features.html#percent
I am making a lot of ImageButtons where the image aspect does not matter. That is, I do not care if it is stretched. They are invisible buttons to go on top of a background.
Is there an easy way to layout and stretch my ImageButtons through the graphical editor? I do not want to have to test out each possible padding in my xml. I just want to stretch the sides of the images as though it were an Office Word.
Ask if clarification is needed, please.
I'm not really sure to understand your question, but you can use android:scaleType="fitXY" to stretch your images, and android:adjustViewBounds="true" to have them adjust their bounds due to scaling.
I'm not 100% sure about your question neither. If you meant you want to do it in IDE, eclipse allows you to define the button with dragging.
Looking around, I see many questions that are very similar but not exactly like mine. The questions I've seen either want to avoid clipping, or clip to some complex path. I just want a simple clip. Here goes.
I want to create an Android app which uses for the background of its various Activies a large photo that cannot be stretched or 9-patched (this is a firm customer requirement). Instead, I just want to provide an image large enough to accommodate the various screen sizes/densities, with excess simply clipped or not displayed - as if it just overflowed the screen.
The images are not patterned or otherwise regular or similar to each other. They are photos indeed, with subjects and ideas presented, so I will of course have to decide which parts are displayed, but I'm not concerned with that right now - just how to approach the problem.
Are there layout XML parameters I can use? Or do I have to cook up a custom layout?
There's probably a better way, but the immediate thing that came to mind was just to set the image in an image view with a scale type set to not scale, and then to put all your UI elements on top of it with transparent backgrounds. Like this:
<RelativeLayout>
<ImageView android:width=fill_parent
android height=fill_parent
android:scaleType=center />
//your UI here
</RelativeLayout>
I would like to make a simple Android game where a large background image is displayed and some other images are displayed in specific locations over it, where the other images may be clickable.
Here's a quick sample image of what I'm talking about:
The user should be able to tap the soccer player or the moose (ah, the classic "soccer player moose problem"!)
How should I render this screen (which layouts and views?) so the user can interact with it and it will scale properly on different devices?
I would use a RelativeLayout.
You can set the you background image to the layout (fill_parent for height and width).
You can then put your ImageViews, containing your moose and soccer player down on the layout relative to the top or sides of the sceen, or relative to each other (making sure to specify "dp" units for everything). Set the backgrounds of your ImageViews to be transparent, and there won't be a bounding box problem (and/or you can also set your ImageViews alignment to be relative to each other, ensuring they don't overlap).
I think this is the simplest way to do this - it is then super easy to attach onClickListener to your ImageViews in your Activity, and you are done.
This type of layout will work the same on all devices and screen sizes.
There are some small gotcha's with RelativeLayouts, but they are pretty simple once you get into them, and provide fast rendering (since the view hierarchy is usually shallow). Good Luck.
ImageView for the clickable elements seems like a fine choice to me. For the background I would just set your image as the background of the parent layout i.e. RelativeLayout
SurfaceView for the whole thing (with your field as a background) and regular *ImageView*s for added elements. You can easily recover the click coordinates from the SurfaceView and thus know what element has been touched.
SurfaceView might offer you additional possibilities anyway.
For most images, I'd use an ImageView for each one, like FoamyGuy said.
If they're close enough for overlapping bounding boxes to be an issue, you can still use an ImageView for each, but with a variation of this answer, testing alpha for each ImageView in range.
I would agree with both FoamyGuy and Booger that if your only goal is to place static images onto the screen that do something when you click them, RelativeLayout and ImageViews all the way.
But...
If you are looking to randomly spawn multiple images onto the screen in intervals and have them move around for the player to interact with while explosions are going off and maidens are being kidnapped, you should look into SurfaceView, Canvas, Drawable, TouchEvents, and FrameBuffers.
I want my app to run on a wide variety of android devices in portrait only. I have a whole-screen background image that includes borders for other components. I want to place items like listviews/sponsor ads accurately within those borders... overlay them on top of the background in exactly the right place. Is using Framelayout the best/easiest way to do this? How do I make sure I get the listviews or sponsor ads in exactly the right place, and exactly the right size given that the background will be stretched to different dimensions for different devices? I've considered cutting up the background image instead but that seems like more work. What's the best approach? Thanks for any thoughts!
Unfortunately, this scheme is never going to work consistently across all screen sizes. If you want borders, you need to create 9-patch graphics out of those and assigne them as teh background to the UI item.