Question

I am playing around with background images of TextView objects in Android, and I am wondering about the strange behaviour with the height.

How come I can’t set the height of the TextView to 0 so it gets “invisible” and doesn’t use up any space anymore – when setting a background-image?

Here is some test-code that demonstrates the – for me – strange behaviour.

public class HelloAndroid extends Activity implements View.OnClickListener{

TextView btn;

@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    btn = new TextView(this);
    btn.setOnClickListener(this);
    //Put in any drawable of you in here
    btn.setBackgroundDrawable(getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.restablebg5));
    btn.setHeight(80);

    LinearLayout v = new LinearLayout(this);
    v.setOrientation(LinearLayout.VERTICAL);
    v.addView(btn);
    setContentView(v);        

}

public void onClick(View arg0) {
    btn.setHeight(0);

}

}

How can I set the height of the textview to 0?

Thanks

Answer 1

Do this instead:

btn.setVisibility(View.GONE);

you can also use:
btn.setVisibility(View.INVISIBLE);

the second option will maintain the space, but your item won’t be visible – the first option completely removes your item from the display (and doesn’t maintain the space).