I’m creating an app supporting versions 2.1 and up to what’s currently available.
Now, I’d like to make use of drawables available to the user’s current theme and/or Android version when designing the ActionBar I’m creating.
The drawables enabled in every version provided by Android are very crisp and non-ambiguous, perfect for my needs.
Problem. I can’t access, for instance, @android:drawable/ic_menu_refesh in my XML-files throughout my project.
There is of course the possibility of copying icons from a specific android version and using those, but I can’t really see how I would make this sanely working without copying every version of the icon from every build and keeping track of what version an Android is currently running and reference the suitable drawable.
Another issue, themes(?) such as Sense are making things even that much harder. In my app I’d like to use the device’s current theme. In my case I have an ICS-device that uses Dark Holo-theme and a 2.3.6-device that uses its default theme. In these cases this means selecting a suitable light colored drawable for the ActionBar/menu.
Problem. In Sense on my HTC Sensation S the background color of menu items are white, which means I now have to pick a suitable dark icon.
How would I go about this to be able to use the device’s current theme, and still provide adaptable drawables so they fit the look & feel of the theme?
The only way I could make this work was by copying the icons I wanted provided by Android and then recolor them to a middle ground shade of gray. Not a very ideal solution but it will have to do.