Question

I have a one activity and one layout application. I am implementing ActionBarSherlock, but my theme isn’t applying to my emulator/early devices.

My theme.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>

    <!-- the theme applied to the application or activity -->
    <style name="CustomActivityTheme" parent="Theme.Sherlock">
        <item name="android:actionBarStyle">@style/MyActionBar</item>
        <!-- other activity and action bar styles here -->
    </style>

    <!-- style for the action bar backgrounds -->
    <style name="MyActionBar" parent="Widget.Sherlock.Light.ActionBar.Solid.Inverse">
        <item name="android:backgroundSplit">#4200ff</item>
        <item name="android:backgroundStacked">#4200ff</item>
        <item name="android:background">#4200ff</item>
    </style>


</resources>

This causes the ActionBar on my JellyBean device to turn blue, but it stays black on my 2.2 emulator.

Here is a piece from my manifest.xml:

<application
        android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
        android:label="@string/app_name"
        android:theme="@style/CustomActivityTheme">

Answer 1

In Android version 3.0 and later you can assign theme to to item name android:actionBarStyle. But in 2.3 and earlier there is no Action Bar, so you can’t use item with name android:actionBarStyle. To fix this ActionBarSherlock has defined it’s own item name just actionBarStyle without android prefix.
So your code should look like this

<!-- the theme applied to the application or activity -->
<style name="CustomActivityTheme" parent="Theme.Sherlock">
    <item name="android:actionBarStyle">@style/MyActionBar</item>
    <item name="actionBarStyle">@style/MyActionBar</item>
    <!-- other activity and action bar styles here -->
</style>

<!-- style for the action bar backgrounds -->
<style name="MyActionBar" parent="Widget.Sherlock.Light.ActionBar.Solid.Inverse">
    <item name="android:backgroundSplit">#4200ff</item>
    <item name="android:backgroundStacked">#4200ff</item>
    <item name="android:background">#4200ff</item>
</style>