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Mastering-Android-Themes.md

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The way of Styling in Android

The right way of styling your view's in Android is NOT hardcoding but separating your resources .

For example u should not style in this way

<TextView
    android:id="@+id/heading"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:padding="10dp"
    android:textColor="#000022"
 />

Instead you should create each resource be it color , dimension and create different file for each resource . Then you should create a style and reference them inside there . This is a good way of but to improve on that you should be careful of the variable naming.

Usage in xml

<TextView
    android:id="@+id/heading"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"       
    android:textSize="@dimen/text_size_h1"
    android:padding="@dimen/text_content_padding"
    android:textColor="@color/content_text"
 />

Usage in styles

<style name="heading_text_style">
    <item name="android:textColor">@color/content_text</item>
    <item name="android:textSize">@dimen/text_size_h2</item>
    <item name="android:layout_margin">@dimen/text_content_margin</item>
    <item name="android:layout_width">match_parent</item>
    <item name="android:layout_height">wrap_content</item>
</style>

With

<TextView
    android:id="@+id/heading"
    android:style="@style/heading_text_style"
/>

Styling your user interface means assigning color codes and dimensions to various properties. Like text color, size of icon, text size, background of screen etc etc.

Style is a reusable form of collection of resources. By the way, A theme is also a collection of resources which modifies look and feel of your product. The minor difference is you apply theme on a bigger level, say a screen(Activity) and you usually apply style on a granular level, say a view. The difference is so subtle that there is no theme resource in Android. There is only style resource. You apply theme with style tag.

android:theme="@style/ThemeGrey"

Lastly some info of creating your custom attributes for a Style can be found in this article.

Example:

attr.xml

<attr name="themeColorPrimary" format="reference"/>
Usage

    width, height ... other properties
    android:background="?themeColorPrimary">
</FrameLayout>