Android Dropdown Effect - Spinner or not?

Question

Achieving a true "dropdown" effect (as seen in Adobe's Photoshop Mobile app for Android, image below) has proven challenging using Androids built-in methods.

As others on Stackoverflow have told me, editing the style of a dropdown list view of an Android spinner is limiting.

How is this dropdown effect done?

(I can't seem to get an image to show, so here's a link: Adobe Photoshop Mobile for Android

Answer 1

After viewing the Adobe slideshow I think the way I would attempt to get that to work, using the Android Java SDK, would be to create a ListView object with a transparent background, and then dynamically hide/show it in that position when the menu button is clicked by setting the View's visibility to VISIBLE or GONE.

Getting a ListView to be transparent shouldn't be that difficult. I'd look into AbsoluteLayout to get it to hover over everything in that spot.

Another option might be to display the ListView in a custom Dialog that you've written, again positioning it in that exact spot on the screen so that it looks like a menu extending from the button that was clicked.

Answer 2

It's probably done using low-level draw functions.