Question

I’m trying to create an animation which will slide a textview out to the left and slide in again from the right. Essentially, this would be the same text effect used in the Stopwatch & Timer app (sportstracklive is the developer).

I can use either of these animation sets exclusive of the other and it works fine, does exactly what I want. But as soon as I try using them together, the TextView just blinks over the course about around 1 second. Removing the startOffset works as expected. Both animation sets run simultaneously.

Here’s the XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<set xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <translate
        android:fromXDelta="0%" 
        android:toXDelta="-25%"
        android:fromYDelta="0%" 
        android:toYDelta="0%"
        android:duration="@android:integer/config_shortAnimTime"
    />
    <alpha
        android:interpolator="@android:anim/decelerate_interpolator"
        android:fromAlpha="1.0" 
        android:toAlpha="0.0"
        android:duration="@android:integer/config_shortAnimTime"
    />
    <set>
        <translate
            android:fromXDelta="25%" 
            android:toXDelta="0%"
            android:fromYDelta="0%" 
            android:toYDelta="0%"
            android:startOffset="@android:integer/config_shortAnimTime"
            android:duration="@android:integer/config_shortAnimTime"
        />
        <alpha
            android:interpolator="@android:anim/decelerate_interpolator"
            android:fromAlpha="0.0" 
            android:toAlpha="1.0"
            android:startOffset="@android:integer/config_shortAnimTime"
            android:duration="@android:integer/config_shortAnimTime"
        />
    </set>
</set>

And here’s the lengthy Java code that runs it:

    AnimationSet mSlideRightToLeft = 
        (AnimationSet) AnimationUtils.loadAnimation(this, R.anim.slide_right_to_left);
    mMyTextView.startAnimation(mSlideRightToLeft);

Answer 1

Justinl’s comment is correct. I had the exact same problem a couple months ago. Remove the set tags around the other animations, and keep the startOffsets.

Next remove the animation set in your code and just do a normal load animation:

Animation a = AnimationUtils.loadAnimation(this, R.anim.slide_right_to_left);
mMyTextView.startAnimation(a);

Edit: Yea, it looks like Android simply doesn’t like this setup when there are multiple animations at the same time. I think you might have to create separate files for each set of animations and then configure them via an AnimationSet inside your program.