The last few days I've been doing great stuff in development, but I've seem to have hit a wall on something probably stupid simple. It's annoying. I was hoping I could get some help.
What I'm trying to do
I'm trying to create the awesome transparent ActionBar animation effect from Google Music (as described by Cyril Mottier here)
The problem
I can't even get the actionbar to go into overlay / transparent mode.
My set-up
I've got a library-oriented set-up in Eclipse. I've got a library project (let's call it master) that contains all the actual code and activities. Then I've got a project, that just plugs into the master library (let's call it slave). Lastly there's some open source support libraries that master uses (among others is ActionBarSherlock).
The activity I'm trying to apply this effect to is in the master library. It is declared in slave's manifest as com.example.master.DetailActivity, and that works like a charm.
Also: The theme for the activity may come from several places. Either it's set by slave's manifest, or by master at runtime. Themes may come from the master OR the slave project.
What I've tried
Feels like everything. I've started out by creating a custom theme based on Cyril's article. I made sure that for every item I've had a version with and without the android: prefix as per Jake Wharton's instructions.
I've also tried setting it at runtime using requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_ACTION_BAR_OVERLAY);
What I've got
Nothing. The theme applied succesfully (I can see the actionbar's colors change appropriately), but it NEVER goes into overlay mode, nor does it become transparent.
Help would be greatly appreciated, and would probably be helpful to other's trying this effect.
EDIT:
Here are my themes and styles. Codes are kinda messy because I've been experimenting with them to see where I was going wrong. AppTheme and Theme.TranslucentActionBar.ActionBar.Overlay both won't work.
/res/values/
/res/values-v11/
I'm testing on a Nexus 4 with 4.2.2 installed as well as a 2.3.3 emulator.
OK, so apparently, with my set-up, you can't do it using themes.
I ended it up doing it, globally like this.
setTheme(theme.whatever);
requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_ACTION_BAR_OVERLAY);
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.content);
getSupportActionBar().setBackgroundDrawable(getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.color)); // This is #212121 solid color for the dark action bar.
The lines are spread out over my code, but this is the gist of it. The order is important.
I also found out that sliding menu seemed to be blocking the overlay mode. I had to remove the instance for it to work. I'm still looking for a way to enable both overlay mode and the sliding menu.