Dev Minded

It seems like such a simple thing, you would like to show the Soft Keyboard automatically for a Dialog. You can easily find a number of ways to do this for an Activity. You can also find one often repeated, but inadequate, method being proliferated for a Dialog

InputMethodManager imm =
(InputMethodManager) getSystemServer(INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
imm.toggleSoftInput(imm.SHOW_FORCED, imm.HIDE_NOT_ALWAYS);

There are, however, several problems with this method. It does not…

• respect the user’s phone and presence of a physical keyboard
• close automatically when the dialog closes
• close automatically if the user were to leave the activity or application completely

There is however, a solution if you are targeting at least API Level 3 (Android 1.5). In your `onPrepareDialog()`, or wherever you are displaying your dialog do the following:

dialog.getWindow()
   .setSoftInputMode(WindowManager.LayoutParams.SOFT_INPUT_STATE_VISIBLE);

This will have the same result on a Dialog as setting android:windowSoftInputMode="stateVisible" for an activity in your `AndroidManifest.xml`

I was browsing StackOverflow and came across a question about making custom RadioButtons I figured I could answer so I decided to take the plunge.

So here is how to implement a custom styled RadioButton, you can find the source here.

To do so, you need to take the following steps:

Create the drawable resources for your custom RadioButton. You should have at least 4 icons:

Place your images in res/drawable or if if you make version for each screen density in their corresponding res/drawable-ldpi, res/drawable-mdpi, and res/drawable-hdpi folders.

Then create a selector type XML file in res/drawable. Here is my res/drawable/button_radio.xml

<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
  <item android:state_checked="true" android:state_pressed="false"
      android:drawable="@drawable/radio_on"/>
  <item android:state_checked="false" android:state_pressed="false"
      android:drawable="@drawable/radio_off"/>
  <item android:state_checked="true" android:state_pressed="true"
      android:drawable="@drawable/radio_on_pressed"/>
  <item android:state_checked="false" android:state_pressed="true"
      android:drawable="@drawable/radio_off_pressed"/>
</selector>

Then set-up your RadioGroup like so:

<RadioGroup android:layout_width="fill_parent"
   android:layout_height="50dp"
   android:orientation="horizontal"
   android:checkedButton="@+id/first">
   <RadioButton android:id="@+id/first"
      android:width="50dp"
      android:height="50dp"
      android:button="@drawable/button_radio"/>
   <RadioButton android:id="@+id/second"
      android:width="50dp"
      android:height="50dp"
      android:button="@drawable/button_radio"/>
   <RadioButton android:id="@+id/third"
      android:width="50dp"
      android:height="50dp"
      android:button="@drawable/button_radio"/>
   <RadioButton android:id="@+id/fourth"
      android:width="50dp"
      android:height="50dp"
      android:button="@drawable/button_radio"/>
</RadioGroup>

I have specified dimension of 50dp as the dimension of my drawables are 50px x 50px. Also notice I am setting android:button and not android:background.

Hopefully this can serve as a nice starting point for anyone looking to create some new and interesting effects with simple RadioButtons.

This is just going to be a quick how-to on creating a TextView with custom URL text.

To do this, you need to create a Spannable text object by using Html.fromHtml and then setting the MovementMethod of the TextView to a LinkMovementMethod. Here is an example using a dialog.

dialog = new Dialog(this);dialog.setContentView(R.layout.about);
dialog.setTitle(R.string.about_score_it);
TextView website = (TextView)dialog.findViewById(R.id.about_website);

String realURL = "http://blog.devminded.com/projects/score-it";
String visibleURL = "http://blog.devminded.com";

//The following builds the spannable item and will cause the text to display as a link
website.setText(Html.fromHtml("<a href=\" + realURL + "\">" + visibleURL + "</a>"));

//The following makes it clickable
website.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());

Or with resources:

dialog = new Dialog(this);
dialog.setContentView(R.layout.about);
dialog.setTitle(R.string.about_score_it);
TextView website = (TextView)dialog.findViewById(R.id.about_website);         

website.setText(Html.fromHtml("<a href=\"" + mRes.getString(R.string.about_score_it_website_url) + "\">" + mRes.getString(R.string.about_score_it_website_text) + "</a>"));

website.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());

To see the full context of this example please check out ScoreIt.java