I've been scouring the interwebs (e.g. Android documentation, answers here, etc.) for the answer to what I thought would be a fairly trivial question. How do you achieve a translucent action bar like the ones in Google Music and YouTube (links are image examples)?
I want video content to be full screen and not constrained/pushed down by the action bar while still leveraging the benefits of a built in UI component. I can obviously use a completely custom view, but I'd rather leverage the ActionBar if possible.
Manifest
<activity
android:name="videoplayer"
android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Holo"
android:launchMode="singleTop"
android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation"/>
Activity
// Setup action bar
ActionBar actionBar = getActionBar();
actionBar.setNavigationMode(ActionBar.NAVIGATION_MODE_STANDARD);
View customActionBarView = getLayoutInflater().inflate(R.layout.player_custom_action_bar, null);
actionBar.setCustomView(customActionBarView,
new ActionBar.LayoutParams(ActionBar.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,
R.dimen.action_bar_height));
actionBar.setDisplayOptions(ActionBar.DISPLAY_SHOW_CUSTOM);
Menu
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item
android:id="@+id/button1"
android:icon="@drawable/button1"
android:showAsAction="always"/>
<item
android:id="@+id/button2"
android:icon="@drawable/button2"
android:showAsAction="always"/>
</menu>
Custom ActionBar View
<LinearLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="@+id/custom_action_bar"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="horizontal"
android:gravity="center"
android:background="@color/TranslucentBlack">
<!--Home icon with arrow-->
<ImageView
android:id="@+id/home"
android:src="@drawable/home"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="match_parent"/>
<!--Another image-->
<ImageView
android:id="@+id/image"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:visibility="visible"/>
<!--Text if no image-->
<TextView
android:id="@+id/text"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:gravity="center_vertical"
android:visibility="gone"/>
<!--Title-->
<TextView
android:id="@+id/title"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:paddingLeft="20dp"
android:gravity="center_vertical"/>
</LinearLayout>
If you want your activity to be fullscreen but still show an actionbar, but with an alpha you have to request overlaymode for the actionbar in onCreate()
of your activity:
getWindow().requestFeature(Window.FEATURE_ACTION_BAR_OVERLAY);
//getWindow().requestFeature(WindowCompat.FEATURE_ACTION_BAR_OVERLAY); << Use this for API 7+ (v7 support library)
Then after you call setContentView(..)
(since setContentView(..)
also initializes the actionbar next to setting the content) you can set a background drawable on your actionbar:
getActionBar().setBackgroundDrawable(getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.actionbar_bg));
which can be a shape drawable with an alpha put in res/drawable:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:shape="rectangle">
<solid android:color="#BB000000" />
</shape>
You could also do this completely programatically by creating a ColorDrawable
:
getActionBar().setBackgroundDrawable(new ColorDrawable(Color.argb(128, 0, 0, 0)));
Otherwise ofcourse you can hide the actionbar completely; in that case you can set a custom theme on your activity in your manifest:
@android:style/Theme.NoTitleBar.Fullscreen
or programmatically by calling
getActionBar().hide();