I'm trying to work out how to create the layout for a gridview for my game. I have a gridview which will be the level selector. At the moment I have each gridview item as a TextView, just showing the Level Number (1, 2, 3, etc).
I would like to add 3 imageviews over the top of the textview and be able to manipulate the image shown in the views. The 3 image views are stars, showing what difficulty the level was completed on.
I figure I need to write my own Adapter and inflate the XML layout when creating the views for the grid items but I'm stuck with how to create the actual layout for this, the overlapping part has me scratching my head?
Here's a mockup of what I've tried to describe, and what I want to create:
PS. I know I could use 4 images and set the textview background to one of those images but I wondered if there was a more technical way of creating the layout.
I would use a relative view!
The basics would be, define your button background Bitmap/Drawable with the #1 on it, and then, for each button, have a layout with the copper, silver and gold stars. You can use android:layout_alignParentLeft="true" and android:layout_alignParentBottom="true" on the Copper start and base the other alignments off of that one. Then you just set the stars drawable based on if the star is toggled on or of.
I'm going to use rough psuedo code here:
<RelativeLayout android:id="button1">
<ImageView android:id="copper_star" android:layout_alignParentLeft="true" android:layout_alignParentBottom="true" />
<ImageView android:id="silver_star" android:layout_alignParentBottom="true" android:layout_rightOf="#id/copper_star"/>
...etc...
</RelativeLayout>
Once you've got it looking the way you want, you can see this discussion by Mark Murphy. He explains how to set the properties of a button to do what you'd like.
I went with the un-technical 4 images in the end, it was simple and easy and there aren't any issues scrolling through the grid so it's all good.
Related
In my app I am calling API to get list of people with some informations (address, phone numbers etc.). Under every phone number, I am creating programatically 3 buttons (add to contacts, edit and call). Problem is, that last button is cut off (small screen). I am using Linear Layout horizontal.
Is there any way to control size of screen and if needed, put last button to second line? When I rotate screen to landscape, I have enough space, so buttons should stay in one line.
Now, I am using horizontalScrollView with visible scrollbar. It's working, but I am not very satisfied with it.
Thanks for help.
I'm not really sure if you can do that with LinearLayout. But you could do that using FlowLayout. Check this link: https://github.com/ultimate-deej/FlowLayout-for-Android.
This layout moves the buttons to the next line if there is no space for them on the screen.
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="horizontal">
<Button
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:weight="1" />
<Button
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:weight="1" />
</LinearLayout>
the weight attribute will automatically adjust your button size
make sure you set width to match parent for all buttons.
Best to create a new variant of the listitem layout for smaller screenshots:
layout-w200dp/listitem.xml : layout with 3 buttons on one line
layout/listitem.xml : layout with buttons on separate lines
Android will then choose the multiline layout when the current available width is smaller than 200dp. (Note that you can still tweak the 200 to a different value)
Alternatively you can also use an alternatieve linearlayout which does the wrapping for you: Flowlayout
This is probably more complicated to achieve that you wan't it to be but the best shot is to use some adapter based solution:
GridView - this is the old solution, better go for the 2nd
RecyclerView with StaggeredLayoutManager setup to your needs
Simple solution is using android:layout_weight="1" and android:layout_width="0dp" as params for each button in your LinearLayout but then they will fit the whole screen and take the same percent of the width, and if the screen is too small buttons might get cut off.
the xml file:
<RelativeLayout
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:id="#+id/singleProp"
android:scrollbarAlwaysDrawVerticalTrack="true"
android:visibility="gone">
<ImageView
android:layout_width="200dp"
android:layout_height="200dp"
android:id="#+id/propertyImg"/>
<ListView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:id="#+id/propertyData"
android:layout_below="#id/propertyImg">
</ListView>
</RelativeLayout>
With the above codes, the image will be fixed at top-center position. With CSS terms in html, the style of that image view is style="position:fixed" but what I want is style="position:relative".
For example,
I hope the picture can illustrate the idea.
May I know how I should modify my codes?
Let me elaborate a bit more on mark.zhai`s answer, since it's the only one that I find to be the proper approach.
First of all I wanna point out that you should think about implementing your list with a RecyclerView instead of ListView (right now it's generally favoured to use a RecyclerView; ListView is getting kinda deprecated)...
If you want to be sure that your ImageView works nicely (scroll-wise) with your list (without too much "side-work" on scroll integration), you should implement it as a first item of your list. If you stick with your ListView you can use the header function of it and add your ImageView with ListView's method addHeaderView. If you decide to move to a RecyclerView (which I think you should), you can accomplish that in a bit more difficult manner (more on that for example here).
why don't u make the imageview an item of the listview
For this you need to create a custom listview which having the first item as a image view and later having all your list items. Probably you can control this in your adapter getview method by the use of position(int)
For example if Position is equal to '0' show only image view and if position is not equal to '0' show your rest elements by using Visibility
Note: here their might be a chance of performance issues as it is loading the unnecessary views every time
To achieve this, you need to scrolling the complete layout. In general case, when you fling on a list view, only the item within the list view moves.
Check this link.
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, as I don't know a lot about CSS, but you can check out this link which describes aligning elements within a Relative Layout.
You might want to try adding alignParentLeft or alignParentRight.
Remember margins are external to the object and padding is internal. For example to move the image 20dp from the left you would:
<ImageView
android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
android:layout_marginLeft="20dp"
android:layout_width="200dp"
android:layout_height="200dp"
android:id="#+id/propertyImg"/>
Here are some useful links about mastering Relative Layouts:
Relative Layout Params
Moving Elements Around in a Relative Layout Tutorial
Another RelativeLayout Example
Margins and Padding
Why don't you use layout_below to take your layout below whatever you want, and use layout_gravity to set it's gravity. You can check these Link to get you better understand, it will help you in these problem.
I'm trying to port an app from iOS to Android. In my iOS app I have an image view which displays a map, and on top of it I want to display multiple button views on certain specific positions.
None of the standard views in Android seem to fit my needs, but I am surely missing something. How could I achieve this?
Thanks
The easiest thing to do would be to use any layout that's best suited for your needs (LinearLayout, FrameLayout, RelativeLayout, etc.) and set its background to any image you need. I believe the image will automatically scale to fill the corresponding Layout. Put the image into the appropriate drawable folders - and format your XML similar to this:
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="#+id/buttons"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:background="#drawable/background_image">
...
</RelativeLayout>
As I am actually not very confident with programatically changing Views, I have following problem:
At the first start of my app, I want to have an overlay for the main screen, that tells the user to have a look at the settings, as there are two critical options the user has to configure.
I don't want to use an AlertDialog and rather not use a wizard. So, I decided to take an approach similar to Go SMS and create an overlay at the first start. The mockup I created looks like this:
Normal menu:
First start:
So these are the problems I have:
Like I said, I don't want to use a screenshot overlaying on first start, as this would take too much space and would not be language and screen independent.
I would have the circle as an png, but I don't know how exactly put it over the image
The same problem with the text
And finally I want to put a semi-transparent white over the app. It does not necessarily need the hole for the icon, though it would be nice.
In case you need the Layout Source, you can get it at pastebin
So, I just need to get a start here, if it is better to use LayoutInflater or ViewStub and how to realize it, as I have absolutely no experience with it...
Thanks!
/edit: I uploaded a new, more well-arranged layout.
I have faced a similar problem, I client wanted a walkthrough of the application, where the entire screen had to become whiter (as they said: "transparent"), except for the button being explained by an overlay speech-bubble.
Fortunately for you, your layout is not nearly as complicated as the one I had to work with :)
Now, you can get the transparency-effect in two ways, either have a white background and call all the views setAlpha() methods, or you can create a half-transparent white overlay.
If you go with the overlay, you'll have to find a way to display the opaque buttons through the overlay. This can get a bit complicated.
If you go with the first option, you can just setAlpha(1) on the opaque view to get it to show up.
The setAlpha() method is only available from api version 11+, so if you target an earlier version, you might have to do it in a slightly more complicated way.
Example of setting alpha on views pre-honeycomb:
Layout for your buttons (make them however you want, just make them similar so you can loop through them):
<LinearLayout
android:id="#+id/button1"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="vertical">
<ImageView
android:tag="image"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:src="#drawable/tile"/>
<TextView
android:tag="text"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:textColor="#FF000000"
android:text="button1"/>
</LinearLayout>
In your program, when you are want to make the buttons transparent:
LinearLayout l = (LinearLayout) findViewById(R.id.button1);
((ImageView)l.findViewWithTag("image")).setAlpha(0x7F);
((TextView)l.findViewWithTag("text")).setTextColor(0x7F000000);
When you have decided on how you want to create the transparency effect, you will have to decide on how to display the overlay-text/bubble. You'll most likely want to put this in a separate layer on top of your entire layout, to make sure that it is not affected by your new view.
One way to achieve this is by changing your root layout element to a FrameLayout, and then creating/displaying in this. e.g:
<FrameLayout background="#FFFF"> <!-- white background, just in case -->
<LinearLayout>
<!-- the rest of your layout -->
</LinearLayout>
<LinearLayout visibility="gone"> <!-- this will be your overlay view -->
<ImageView /> <!-- the arrow/ring -->
<TextView /> <!-- the description -->
</LinearLayout>
</FrameLayout>
When the introduction is displayed, you set the position of the hidden overlay-view to the position of the table item to be explained, change the text to an appropriate string/resource and display the view.
When the introduction is over, you reset the alpha values of all buttons, and set the visibility of the overlay to gone again.
Since I don't have much experience with ViewStub, I would do it with LayoutInflater.
First of all, you need to have a second layout loaded on top of your current layout. The easiest is to have a FrameLayout, which has as one child your current view, and the dynamically you load the second child on the first start. When you load a content view in an Activity, it will be attached to some already created views (some DecorView, a FrameLayout, etc). So you can either re-use the existing FrameLayout, or you can create a new one.
I would vote for the second solution, since it's more stable (I just mentioned the other possibility in case you want to minimize the number of layers).
So, as a first step, wrap your current layout inside a FrameLayout, and give it an id, let's say "#id/root".
Then, in the onCreate method, you can have something like this:
setContentView(R.layout.main);
if (isFirstRun()) {
ViewGroup parent = (ViewGroup)findViewById(R.id.root); // locate the FrameLayout
LayoutInflater li = LayoutInflater.from(this); // get an instance of LayoutInflater
li.inflate(R.layout.overlay, parent);
}
So far you will have the overlay loaded. Now it's up to you to define the overlay.
To make the whitening effect, just set the following attribute on the root view in your overlay.xml layout:
android:background="#40ffffff"
To position the circle, first you need to find it's location. You can use the View.getLocationOnScreen to get the absolute coordinate of the icon (below the circle) on the screen. Then you can have two options:
either create a custom view (for the overlay) and manually draw the circle at the given location
or add the circle using an ImageView and adjust the left and top margins based on the coordinates
As you can see the picture below that when there is no item in the list it shows nice icon in the middle of the screen with a text. I can get only a text shown if the listview is empty with this code in my custom layout :
<TextView android:id="#android:id/empty"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:background="#FF0000"
android:text="No data"/>
adding this element in my layout show a text when the list is empty. I would like to show an icon instead and also it should be in the middle of the screen. Instead of a textview if I use a imageView again it goes top of the screen. what is the best approach to this? I might be able to get it as I like using imageview and textview and both with android:id="#android:id/empty attribute. or is that possbile to have layout with the android:id="#android:id/empty attribute and place imageview and textview inside?
Sure, just use a layout. LinearLayout might work well in this case. You'll probably have to set the gravity to center. It seems you already had the right idea, I'm not sure why you didn't just try it out? You would have had it!