android- How to customize actionbar tab

Question

I'm using "Theme.AppCompat.Light" theme for my application in order to work with actionbar. I'm using android.support.v7 and this is the code I'm using for making the actionbar tabs :

    actionbar = getSupportActionBar();
    actionbar.setNavigationMode(ActionBar.NAVIGATION_MODE_TABS);
    ActionBar.Tab tab1 = actionbar.newTab();
    tab1.setText("Tab 1");
    tab1.setTabListener(this);

    ActionBar.Tab tab2=actionbar.newTab();
    tab2.setText("Tab 2");
    tab2.setTabListener(this);

    ActionBar.Tab tab3=actionbar.newTab();
    tab3.setText("Tab 3");
    tab3.setTabListener(this);

    actionbar.addTab(tab1);
    actionbar.addTab(tab2);
    actionbar.addTab(tab3);

it works fine ( I wanted to post some images but I couldn't because of my reputation )

I wanna to do some customization like , change the height of tab , or when a tab is active, I wanna to change the background image and some other sort of thing .

what should I do ? or where I can see actionbar tab styles and do my cusotmization?

thanks alot

Answer 1

You need to create a custom theme and set it to the Activity or whole application in Manifest

Create a custom action bar tab style like this, and change the required attributes

    <style name="MyActionBarTabView" parent="Widget.AppCompat.Base.ActionBar.TabView">
   <item name="android:background">@drawable/action_bar_tab_background</item>
   </style> 

Create a custom theme like this, and change the actionBarTabStyle attribute.

  <style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.Base.AppCompat">
   <item name="android:actionBarTabStyle">@style/MyActionBarTabView</item>
    <item name="actionBarTabStyle">@style/MyActionBarTabView</item>
    </style>