Question

I have tried every sample of code I can find that defines and runs a frame animation, but the ImageView never changes. The original Image in the ImageView stays.

EDIT:
After many days of trial and error, I ran the APK on my phone instead of the emulator.
It works on my phone, but for some reason it does not on the emulator.

Answer 1

I am not exactly clear why you can’t start animations from the onCreate thread, they need to be posted to whatever thread the handler of the view was created on.

@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.main);
    final ImageView view = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.shell);
    view.setVisibility(ImageView.VISIBLE);
    view.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.animation_frame);

    view.post(new Runnable(){

      public void run(){
        AnimationDrawable frameAnimation =  (AnimationDrawable) view.getBackground();
        frameAnimation.start();
      }
    });
   }
}

I have no idea why you need to do this but you do.

edit:Here is snippets from my working project should be everything you need…

in java in onCreate:

final ImageView image1 =  (ImageView) v.findViewById(R.id.coin1);
image1.post(new Runnable() {

        @Override
        public void run() {
            AnimationDrawable ani = (AnimationDrawable) image1.getBackground();
            ani.start();
        }
    });

in xml layout:

        <ImageView android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:background="@drawable/coin"
        android:id="@+id/coin1"/>

coin xml:

<animation-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:oneshot="false">
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/coin_spin_a" android:duration="100"/>
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/coin_spin_b" android:duration="100"/>
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/coin_spin_c" android:duration="100"/>
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/coin_spin_d" android:duration="100"/>
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/coin_spin_e" android:duration="100"/>
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/coin_spin_f" android:duration="100"/>
</animation-list>