I was using startLockTask() in a program but found out it could only be used for Android L. However I want my application to function in versions lower then 5.
Is there any way I can gain similar functionality?
Functionally, no. The point of screen pinning is to prevent the user from leaving your app. The user can't see or click on notifications, or use the home button to leave.
Visually, you can set the app to full screen,, and/or hide notification bar. You can also hide the soft keys on devices that don't have hardware buttons. However, people can always bring it back up.
EDIT: You can also disable the back button.
I've just started to use the SmallApps API of Sony Tablet SDK. I need to show my small app always on the top but when user is opening the screen keyboard small app is making hidden. It possible to solve this problem?
I have set my app as home screen(), so when i clik in home button the system let me to choose between default home screen and my app. I choose my app, it's ok. But when a user change a setting i need to change the home screen to default (system home screen) without choosing it, directly. Is it possible?
Thanks in advance and sorry for my english.
You cannot set the home screen programmatically: you must provide the user with an option to choose which launcher they want to use.
I ran into a similar issue when developing a soft keyboard for Android. Since you can't set the default keyboard, I showed a dialog which allowed the user to pick my keyboard during setup. I then verified that my keyboard was now the default before moving forward in the setup wizard.
Basically, the best you can do is show the dialog chooser to allow the user to choose the default system home screen.
I'm using the Android emulator to test my first Android application. While there is a functioning hard keyboard at the right side of the emulator window, the soft keyboard shows up when editing in an EditText control.
I'm aware of the option to hide the soft keyboard by using an instance of InputMethodManager, however I'm wondering why the soft keyboard does appear at all (when the hard keyboard is available).
To me, as a user, the soft keyboard in this case is rather distracting, hence I'd like to get rid of it if useful. - This question is about the practical context (i.e., is there any use of the soft keyboard when there is a hard keyboard, do real-world devices behave similarly to the emulator) and about general strategies to address the issue.
Thanks. I'll be upvoting any helpful hints.
On my G1, when the hard keyboard was opened, the soft keyboard didn't appear. But I'm not sure whether a device which ALWAYS has a keyboard opened (like the Samsung Galaxy PRO if I'm not mistaken) does the same.
Since the emulator doesn't have a slide keyboard, I think that's the case for this behavior.
With a touch screen device + hard keyboard you have the flexibility to use both. On most devices with hard keyboards the keyboard has to be dragged out. It's much easier to just tap the screen. If you want to type a lot you would take the trouble to slide the keyboard out.
Android gives you the flexibility to program for all these behaviors.
Actually, the AVD emulator does have a slide-out keyboard.
The AVD option "Keyboard support" indicates whether the emulated device has any form of physical keyboard. The option "Keyboard lid support" indicates whether the device has a keyboard that can be opened or closed (slid out or what have you).
As far as actually "opening" and "closing" the keyboard on a device set up with these options,
you need to switch the orientation which is generally what you do with real-world slide-out-keyboard phones, e.g. the original Droid:
Original Droid with slide-out keyboard open
In the emulator, you control this orientation change with Ctrl+F11/Ctrl+F12 or 7/9 (on the number pad only, with NumLk off).
You can confirm the keyboard opening and closing states by checking the value getResources().getConfiguration().hardKeyboardHidden == config.HARDKEYBOARDHIDDEN_YES
As far as whether the soft keyboard appears or not, it appears to me that handling such things is up to you as the programmer. Here's an example you can try in AVD:
Set up an emulator with "Keyboard support" and "Keyboard lid support" both set to yes.
Launch the emulator, then open Android's built in Messaging app.
Click in one of the text boxes - the soft keyboard should show up.
Switch the orientation of the emulator with Ctrl+F12 - the soft keyboard should now disappear
Note there seems to be a problem with the emulator itself, that switching back to portrait mode doesn't cause apps to redraw themselves back to portrait layout. but they will switch back to closed keyboard mode, which yields some odd, sideways-y behavior.
For an example of code to catch the keyboard opening/closing events, check out: http://www.how-to-develop-android-apps.com/how-to-detect-screen-orientation-change-in-android/
After testing on real world devices; On the motorola milestone that has a sliding keyboard that if it's open the soft keyboard is not shown, but when it's closed the soft keyboard is shown. On the HTC Cha-Cha, that has a permanently shown keyboard, the phone always uses the hardware keyboard. Even when in landscape and the hard keyboard would be very difficult to use it doesn't show a soft keyboard (Even after installing a soft keyboard I was unable to select it for use under Keyboard & Language Settings).
For additional information about the phone you can use the following.They will return the keyboard type and whether or not it is a hard keyboard and shown. Note: Phones without a hard keyboard that I've tested report that hardKeyboardHidden=2; (Which indicates hidden=yes), but type reports as soft keyboard which makes sense.
Configuration config = getContext().getResources().getConfiguration();
int keyboardHidden=config.hardKeyboardHidden;
int keyboard=config.keyboard;
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/res/Configuration.html#HARDKEYBOARDHIDDEN_NO
I am developing an Android application. What I find most annoying during testing is, that the emulator always pops up that on-screen telephone keyboard whenever I click into a text input field. Since I input my data with the keyboard anyway I find that most annoying. Can one switch that on-screen keyboard appearance off? Or can one change that so that it at least presents a mini-qwerty keyboard as my actual device does, not that old-fashioned T9 keyboard?
Michael
You can disable the virtual keyboard in Settings->Language.
If you change orientation of the emulator it won't popup (KEYPAD_7, Ctrl-F11).
If you use cursor keys instead of clicking the fields, probably won't popup either.
Whatever you do, keep in mind that in actual devices it usually pops up anyway.