Android AppCompat 21 Elevation

android android-view material-design
Eliezer picture Eliezer · Nov 4, 2014 · Viewed 73.2k times · Source

Is there any way to add elevation to a View in pre-lollipop devices without wrapping them in a CardView?

Answer

Derk-Jan picture Derk-Jan · Nov 5, 2014

ViewCompat.setElevation(View, int) currently creates no shims.

The only way to simulate elevation right now is to apply a shadow pre-v21. Define your style/layout/drawable in values and override it in values-v21. For buttons I use style overrides. For layouts, I usually go for reference override (use @null to get rid of a drawable).

Hopefully in the future an update to the support library will add shims.

This reddit thread keeps track of said update.

Edit

The new support design library actually does create shims for the floating action button.

Related questions

Coloring Buttons in Android with Material Design and AppCompat

Before the AppCompat update came out today I was able to change the color of buttons in Android L but not on older versions. After including the new AppCompat update I am unable to change the color for either version, …

Read More
Is there an easy way to add a border to the top and bottom of an Android View?

I have a TextView and I'd like to add a black border along its top and bottom borders. I tried adding android:drawableTop and android:drawableBottom to the TextView, but that only caused the entire view to become black. <…

Read More
Android basics: running code in the UI thread

In the viewpoint of running code in the UI thread, is there any difference between: MainActivity.this.runOnUiThread(new Runnable() { public void run() { Log.d("UI thread", "I am the UI thread"); } }); or MainActivity.this.myView.post(new Runnable() { public …

Read More