Database Users

[Q] ScrollView, SetText and scrollTo

Hi,
Im just getting into Android development and picking up pace slowly. Getting confused how people are getting settings style menus with the appropriate colour Summary Line while adding icons for Stars and Checkboxes etc to highlight and tick.
Anyhoo, I have a TextViews inside a LinearLayout inside a ScrollView, seems to work OK. I use SetText to set the Text on the TextViews and I create everything at run time instead of through the XML files.
But the application I have is a polling type application and I need to repopulate the TextViews and redraw the ScrollView in the same position that the user scrolled to previously.
Im accutely aware of problems using ScrollTo after you've used SetText, so I found the following code:
Code:
sView.post(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
sView.scrollTo(0, iTop);
}
});
It works, but there's a screen flicker where it first draws the screen in its normal position then sets the scrollTo.
What is the best way of achieving this, or am I doing everything completely backwards and most normal people wouldn't have this kind of problem?
Thanks
Simon

It sounds more like you might want to consider using a listview instead. It was designed to contain several child views and scrolls and updates seamlessly.

Hi,
Thanks for the reply. Perhaps I am a bit too much of a beginner.
I seem to be favouring TableLayout so that I can display tabular data and have columns resize correctly and have the data presented OK.
I think that's why I went with updating everything at design time because I have a variable number of rows that can be added. IIUC, variable rows (in an XML file) I think can only be created using ListView, but of course a TableRow needs a TableLayout as a parent.
Here is the idea...
Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TableLayout android:id="@+id/TableLayout01" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"><TableRow android:id="@+id/TableRow01" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content">
<TextView android:text="@+id/TextView01" android:paddingRight="5px" android:id="@+id/TextView01" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"></TextView>
<TextView android:text="@+id/TextView02" android:id="@+id/TextView02" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"></TextView>
</TableRow>
</TableLayout>
The code I have for TableRows is not dissimilar to, http://en.androidwiki.com/wiki/Dynamically_adding_rows_to_TableLayout
But of course using setText means I cannot then scrollTo

Duh.
First learning curve mastered.
You only need to add views to containers etc the first time you display the screen.
You can update the text in the views later on without affecting the screen position.
I like this.

Menu Inflate XML problem

Hi, first post here & I did search for an answer first
I'm trying to add a menu to my app, in my onCreateOptionsMenu method I can use
menu.add(0, 1, 0, "Text1");
menu.add(0, 2, 0, "Text2");
etc
It works OK & when I press the menu key it pops up, the onOptionsItemSelected method correctly detects the item selected.
If I try to use the MenuInflater on an XML file, it does not work. When I press the MENU key, it pops up a menu with blank buttons - no text or icons & the number of buttons corresponds to the number of ITEM entries in my XML. The XML looks valid .
Any ideas where I'm going wrong. I would paste the code, but the forum says I cant until I've made more posts.
Thanks.

Still new to this myself, but in my recent menu tries, i had to put in a TextView into the xml to tell it what to say.
<TextView
android:text="@string/menu_button1" />
And define the name you want on that button under the strings file.
<String name="menu_button1">New Game</String>
I may be completly off so take what Im saying with a grain of salt lol

Hmmmm, tried that & it didnt work either. Thxs for the suggestion.

Not a problem the book i have at home had me do some menus, i could post the books complete code later maybe i missed something with what i told you. Its in pdf form so it wouldnt be a big deal. Ill be getting home in around 3 hours.
Maybe its a combination of button and textview together to actually make it work. It was pretty easy last time i did it so im sure its just a small detail being missed. I've slowly learned eclipse isnt able to catch every single error.

is your menu's xml file in the res/menu folder? if not it prob wont work

Yup res/menu

Here is the code for the menu from my book.
Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:background="@color/background"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:padding="30dip"
android:orientation="horizontal" >
<LinearLayout
android:orientation="vertical"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_gravity="center" >
<TextView
android:text="@string/main_title"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="center"
android:layout_marginBottom="25dip"
android:textSize="24.5sp" />
<Button
android:id="@+id/continue_button"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="@string/continue_label" />
<Button
android:id="@+id/new_button"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="@string/new_game_label" />
<Button
android:id="@+id/about_button"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="@string/about_label" />
<Button
android:id="@+id/exit_button"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="@string/exit_label" />
</LinearLayout>
</LinearLayout>
And the strings file
Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
<string name="app_name">Sudoku</string>
<string name="main_title">Android Sudoku</string>
<string name="continue_label">Continue</string>
<string name="new_game_label">New Game</string>
<string name="about_label">About</string>
<string name="exit_label">Exit</string>
</resources>

Thats pretty close to what I'm doing, but not exactly. The main difference seems to be your using a LinearLayout & my code uses RelativeLayout. OK, I'll try your code EXACTLY when I get home later. Thanks.

When you say menu, you are referring to the options that pop up when you press the hardware menu button, right?

I ask because... what does that linearlayout code have to do with a menu?
Are you implementing this function?
onPrepareOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
MenuItem option 1 = menu.findItem(R.id.opt1);
...
}

I thought the Layout may affect how the menu text & icons were displayed & was why I couldn't see them.
No I dont implement onPrepareOptionsMenu, only onCreateOptionsMenu and onOptionsItemSelected - I'd post my code but the forum wont let me yet
I'm following the example from Android Developers "Creating Menus" which only has those 2 methods detailed.

OK guys I've fixed it !!! You'll never guess what it was.......
.... OK, I'll tell you then
In my menu.xml, I had the menu namespace xmlns URI as https not http, I had copied & pasted this from another website. Changed it back & we are working again.
Thanks for the assist - Thanks have been awarded.

Oh man thats a killer...I've had that happen to me a couple of times already
Good example android.text instead of android:text...lol
Glad to here its working though,good luck with the rest of your app.

lol - I either need more or less caffeine - not sure which.
Thanks bud.

[Q] addind a button to a secondary view is crashing my program

I am making a game that has a main.xml view (the default one that the game screen is made from. But I have a button for "help" that starts a new view which is just text explaining how to play the game. But I want to add a button to the help menu that will take the user back to the main game. Only problem is when I add a button to the xml file for it, it always crashes as soon as it is called. All the other buttons work fine in main.xml but I cant get the ones in the help.xml to work. Any suggestions?

The way that android's view hierarchy works is actually kind of complicated, and is one thing that I still at times struggle to grasp.
So when you press the help button, and help.xml is supposed to show up, it crashes?

yeah, heres my xml code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ScrollView
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
androidadding="10dip" >
<TextView
android:id="@+id/about_content"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="Text goes here" />
</ScrollView>
But it crashes if theres a button inside of it

are you using the new layout in the same Activity or a new one? If the same, try out making a new Activity class (remember to add it to manifest!), it might be a lot easier to then determine your problem if it's separate.
We could do with a logcat output of the crash to help determine what's wrong

Two simple Android SDK things I need help with

I actually yesterday spent some more time with Eclipse Android SDK yesterday and learned how to: center buttons, add buttons, add admob, etc. but I still need to know 2 things:
How do I put buttons side to side?
How do I add sounds to buttons?
P.S. - I am not sure if this is the correct place to post this. I was just spending lots of time trying to the above things out and couldn't, so I figured why not ask the developers pros here at Xda.

I prefer to use RelativeLayouts instead of LinearLayouts.. I feel that LinearLayouts are much more difficult to work with, and are much less intuitive.
When using a RelativeLayout, you could do something like this:
<Button android:id="@+id/button1"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/button2"
/>
<Button android:id="@+id/button2"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
/>
This would put button1 to the right of button2.
Additionally, if you wanted some space between them, you could specify this in button1:
android:layout_marginLeft="10dp"
To add sounds to a button click... explore the MediaPlayer class.
In the onClickListener of your button, you would have something like media.start()

textview above spinner

i worked it in relativelayout..then i did in linearlayout
all same result
textvie above spinner.. the textview is a bit more onto the left then the spinner..so design not looking that nice.
<TextView
android:layout_marginLeft="8dip"
android:id="@+id/selectStatement"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:gravity="left"
android:text="@string/select_choice" />
<Spinner
android:id="@+id/dropDownList"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>
I solved it adding marginleft="8dip"
but dont think its best solution... why does spinner take a left padding while drawn?

Use RelativeLayout and align it to a certain position and then add required padding. Add this to the Spinner:
Code:
android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
android:layout_below="@id/selectStatement"
<!-- If required -->
android:layout_marginLeft="xxdp