CODEWITHSUNDEEP
android
janin
janin

Reputation: 63

Android - display a persistent view over all activities

I'd like to recreate a functionality similar to a Swing GlassPane to be able to display animations while the user uses the app "below" normally. I cannot simply create a separate layout and attach it to each activity since the animation state would be lost when switching activities. Is there a way to keep a persistent view over all the activities of an Android application ?

Thanks.

Upvotes: 6

Views: 3013

Answers (2)

Franco
Franco

Reputation: 7475

why not think in a TabActivity?

hi! i do this before with a TabActivity, never with an only activity, always with many activitys wich i started, get theirs windows and setting as my TabActivity window´s decor view... i dont tested the code below, since is an idea, but maybe more lately (when i'll be on home) i'll write an example...

So, my idea... a TabActivity is composed by a TabWidget and a FrameLayout where the activity´s windows is allocated.

the TabWidget can be any view, so, you can put the animated view here.

the most difficult thing is the fact that, if you start an activity from the TabActivity´s child, then the new activity will be on top of the TabActivity. In order to overrides this behavior the TabActivity must know when a nested activity wants to start another activity. When this happens the TabActivity must clear his decor view (with the old window activity) and put the decor view of new one. Something like this:

on the child activity, launch a new activity when we click on a button: ... on click listener...

((MyTabActivity)getParent()).createNewActivity("NewActivity", NewActivity.class);

now, we´re saying the TabActivity that it has to start a new activity, get the new activity decor view and put that view inside the TabActivity decor view... so, the createNewActivity will perform something like this:

public void createNewActivity(String activityId, Class<?> class1) {
    Intent intent = new Intent( getIntent().getAction() ).setClass(MyTabActivity.this, class1);
    Window wList = getLocalActivityManager().startActivity(activityId, intent);
    getWindow().setContentView(wList.getDecorView());
}

hope you understand me.

i'll write an example later

Upvotes: 0

Chris
Chris

Reputation: 7853

No its not. Every Activity runs in its own thread and is by design supposed to be runnable standalone.

But you could persist the animation state into the DB or into sharedPreferences and start it over at the new activity.

What you could also do is to use a Spinner or another control instead of seperate activitys. Then you could have a persistent view.

Upvotes: 1

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