Question

I made a layout that is just simply a textview that says “What do you want?”, followed by a series of buttons underneath it.

All of the buttons can be clicked/touched, but when I scroll with the trackball, none of them become highlighted. I noticed, however, then when I disable the background colors on the buttons, I can see the orange box that shows that button’s focus.

Is there any way I can visibly see the focus while still being able to have a background color on the buttons?

EDIT: Found the solution! This helped A LOT. Standard Android Button with a different color

Answer 1

Rather than applying a simple background color to buttons, try applying a ColorStateList instead.

To do so, define a new XML file at

/res/color/buttonstate.xml

and use code such as the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <item android:color="# FOCUSED COLOR HERE"
          android:state_focused="true" />
    <item android:drawable="# DEFAULT COLOR HERE" />
</selector>

Notes:

• You can definitely add more colors for more states, such as pressed, enabled, and certain other factors.
• In the layout or code just reference R.color.buttonstate or @color/buttonstate (the XML’s filename).
• Make sure the default color is last. This is because it goes down the list and finds the first item that has all of the states the same as it. If you don’t provide android:state_focused="false" for the default item and put it first, it will always display.
• You can do a similar thing with drawables and
  nine-patch drawables to make your own custom button styles.