Question

on Android 2.2 the Spinner in my ActionBar looks really ugly and the dropdown text color is the same as the background color. This makes the text unreadable.

Here is the relevant code.

spinner = new Spinner(getSupportActionBar().getThemedContext());
ArrayAdapter<String> spinnerArrayAdapter = new ArrayAdapter<String>
(
    getSupportActionBar().getThemedContext(), 
    R.layout.sherlock_spinner_dropdown_item, 
    new String[]{"All", "Solved", "Unsolved"}
);
spinner.setAdapter(spinnerArrayAdapter);

Edit: I have added the below 3 lines for completeness.

menu.add("Display")
    .setActionView(spinner)
    .setShowAsAction(MenuItem.Show_AS_ACTION_ALWAYS);

Here is what it looks like on Android 4.2. This is what I expected it to look like on Android 2.2 also.

Answer 1

When you create the SpinnerArrayAdapter, you should use R.layout.sherlock_spinner_item; then you should call setDropDownViewResource(R.layout.sherlock_spinner_dropdown_item) on the adapter. Note the difference between the two resource names.

From the sample code:

Context context = getSupportActionBar().getThemedContext();
ArrayAdapter<CharSequence> list = ArrayAdapter.createFromResource(context, R.array.locations, R.layout.sherlock_spinner_item);
list.setDropDownViewResource(R.layout.sherlock_spinner_dropdown_item);

For your code this would be:

spinner = new Spinner(getSupportActionBar().getThemedContext());
ArrayAdapter<String> spinnerArrayAdapter = new ArrayAdapter<String>
(
    getSupportActionBar().getThemedContext(), 
    R.layout.sherlock_spinner_item, 
    new String[]{"All", "Solved", "Unsolved"}
);
spinnerArrayAdapter.setDropDownViewResource(R.layout.sherlock_spinner_dropdown_item);
spinner.setAdapter(spinnerArrayAdapter);