Task for today: how to add a background to the app. Something simple but colorful.
Let’s gather sources:
1. Free Icons http://ntt.cc/2010/08/04/350-fresh-and-elegant-free-icons-for-android.html
2. Round buttons http://blog.stylingandroid.com/archives/55#more-55
3. Maybe this is it? Let’s try.
<style name="dialog_footer"> <item name="android:background">@drawable/dialog_footer</item> <item name="android:paddingTop">5dp</item> </style> Somehow Padding is not taking effect. it appears constant. 4. EditText style. Adding this line to my styles for edit boxes is creating round edge, nice look actually. Accepting.
<item name=”android:background”>@android:drawable/editbox_background</item>
5. next let’s try android:background=”@android:drawable/gallery_image” for FrameLayout. What would it do? I added it to my ScrollView and it makes my view elevated , with a grey-ish shadow all around. Nice. I’ll try with another image but I am accepting it.
Added padding attribute to see wider margin on the scroll view but it stays constant. Boo. Oh I see, padding is for Inside! of the area, how far of offset children.
Added background to the LinearLayout but it colors all the area inside of the layout.
6. Maybe I have to set window background, not a layout background.
getWindow().setBackgroundDrawableResource(R.drawable.my_drawable);
Something funky with using drawable for background, seems that the image has to be some certain size and pretty big. Weird. Later I have to lookup how to use tiled image , maybe that will avoid creating large image with unknown size.
Bottom line: background attribute is for inside of the View. Padding is for inside of the view. Android:drawable has several images that could be useful.
If you want to control the space around your view use android:layout_margin* instead of android:padding*