ActionBar background image

Question

I've inherited the Holo Light Theme and customized the background of the ActionBar with the following:

Content of styles.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
<style name="ActionBar" parent="@android:style/Widget.Holo.ActionBar">
<item name="android:background">@drawable/actionbar_background</item>
</style>
<style name="MyTheme" parent="@android:style/Theme.Holo.Light">
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">@style/ActionBar</item>
</style>
</resources>

Content of actionbar_background.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<bitmap xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:src="@raw/actionbar_background"
android:tileMode="repeat" />

Instead of being repeated, the image is stretched, any idea of why android:tileMode="repeat" is not applied?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Drawable d=getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.background_image_name);  
getActionBar().setBackgroundDrawable(d);

The above code sets the background image for the action bar.
Hope it helps.

Answer 2

Ok, thanks to Romain Guy on #android-dev IRC channel, it's a known bug on honeycomb / Android 3.0 which will be fixed on the next release. Since then, the only solution is do it from code, and it works :-)

 final ActionBar actionBar = getActionBar(); 
 BitmapDrawable background = new BitmapDrawable (BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.raw.actionbar_background)); 
 background.setTileModeX(android.graphics.Shader.TileMode.REPEAT); 
 actionBar.setBackgroundDrawable(background);

Answer 3

You can easily do this thing. If you would like to change Action Bar background image then you place this code to your res/styles.xml file.

 <style name="Theme.MyAppTheme" parent="@android:style/Theme.Holo">
        <item name="android:actionBarStyle">@style/Theme.MyAppTheme.ActionBar</item>
    </style>

    <style name="Theme.MyAppTheme.ActionBar" parent="@android:style/Widget.Holo.ActionBar">
        <item name="android:background">@drawable/top_black_bg</item>
    </style>

For this you have to select an image from "drawable" folder . Here I select an image "tp_black_bg.png"

After that don't forget to declare this theme to your AndroidManifest.xml file

    <application
        .
        .
        .
        android:theme="@style/Theme.MyAppTheme" >.............</application>

Now you can reopen any XML layout file , you can easily see the effect. In the same way you can also able to change the background color of ActionBar.

Thanks.

Answer 4

mActionBar.setBackgroundDrawable(getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.navbar));

Answer 5

Use getSupportActionBar() from android.support.v7 for backward compatability.