Question

I am creating an Android app that uses the Holo theme when available and falls back to the black theme when it isn’t available. I am accomplishing this by using the values, values-v11, and values-14 folders.

I have an activity that I would like to use the ?android:attr/buttonBarStyle and ?android:attr/buttonBarButtonStyle styles but I am unsure how to fall back to a different style when they are not available (such as @android:style/ButtonBar). Here is my layout for reference.

<LinearLayout
    android:id="@+id/buttonArea"
    style="?android:attr/buttonBarStyle"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
    android:gravity="bottom|right"
    android:orientation="horizontal" >

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/button1"
        style="?android:attr/buttonBarButtonStyle"
        android:layout_width="0dp"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_weight="1"
        android:text="Button One" />

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/button2"
        style="?android:attr/buttonBarButtonStyle"
        android:layout_width="0dp"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_weight="1"
        android:text="Button Two" />
</LinearLayout>

Answer 1

I solved this by using two separate layout files, one located in the layout folder and one located in layout-v11. They are almost the same except that they contain different values for the style attribute.

The first one looks like this (in layout):

<LinearLayout
    android:id="@+id/buttonArea"
    style="@style/buttonBar"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
    android:gravity="bottom|right"
    android:orientation="horizontal"
    android:padding="5dp" >

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/button1"
        style="@style/buttonBarButton"
        android:layout_width="0dp"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_weight="1"/>

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/button2"
        style="@style/buttonBarButton"
        android:layout_width="0dp"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_weight="1"/>
</LinearLayout>

The second one looks like this (in layout-v11):

<LinearLayout
    android:id="@+id/buttonArea"
    style="?android:attr/buttonBarStyle"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
    android:gravity="bottom|right"
    android:orientation="horizontal"
    android:padding="5dp" >

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/button1"
        style="?android:attr/buttonBarButtonStyle"
        android:layout_width="0dp"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_weight="1"/>

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/button2"
        style="?android:attr/buttonBarButtonStyle"
        android:layout_width="0dp"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_weight="1"/>
</LinearLayout>

I am not completely satisfied with this approach because of the amount of duplicate information. I would like to find a way to use ?android:attr/buttonBarButtonStyle as a parent style, but I couldn’t find a way to accomplish this.