Question

I am making a custom titlebar using the following xml file:

<LinearLayout
 xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
 android:id="@+id/myTitle"
 android:text="custom title bar"
 android:layout_width="fill_parent"
 android:layout_height="fill_parent"
 android:background="@drawable/background" />

And inside my activity’s onCreate() i have the following code:

public class CustomTitleBar extends Activity {
    /** Called when the activity is first created. */
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
            requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_CUSTOM_TITLE);
            setContentView(R.layout.main);
            getWindow().setFeatureInt(Window.FEATURE_CUSTOM_TITLE, R.layout.mytitle);
    }
}

The title bar is coming no problem.The image i am setting as background(the name of image is background too as u can see in above xml) is also coming.But the problem is in both right and left side of the image there is remaining a little gap i.e the image is not covering the whole width of parent though the layout_width has been set to “fill_parent”.

Anyone any idea.plz help.

Answer 1

The little gap to the left/right is added by the framework since the default windowTitleBackgroundStyle in the standard theme used a 9-patch drawable with that padding. Here’s an example on how to override this:

In AndroidManifest.xml, add an android:theme for your Activity:

<activity
    android:theme="@style/MyCustomTitlebar"
    android:label="Custom Titlebar"
    android:name=".CustomTitlebar" />

Then define the custom theme somewhere in your resources (for example in res/values/themes.xml):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<resources
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <style
        name="MyCustomTitlebar"
        parent="@android:style/Theme">
        <item
            name="android:windowTitleBackgroundStyle">@style/MyBackground</item>
    </style>
    <style
        name="MyBackground">
        <item
            name="android:background">@drawable/background</item>
    </style>
</resources>

Since we move the background to the style, we can modify your mytitle.xml layout to the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<TextView
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@+id/myTitle"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:text="custom title bar" />

You might need to adjust either your background (so it has some padding if it’s a 9-patch) or just set the padding in the mytitle.xml layout (using paddingLeft/Right/Top/Bottom).