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Writing text on icon of Menu in Android?

Answer 1

+2 A:

It's definitely possible. Code like this works:

public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu){
    menu.add(0, MENU_PAUSE, 0, "Pause").setIcon(R.drawable.pause);
    return true;
}

That creates a menu with one item in it, referred to by the int MENU_PAUSE (a unique identifier number), with the title "Pause" and the icon pause from res/drawable.

If that doesn't do it for you, could you show us your code?

Edit to provide more info based on comments:

It turns out the size of the images matters. The default Android menu images are 48*48 or smaller so it would seem that one must use similar sizes as well. Note: I didn't experiment with different screen sizes, this was only with 320x480 screen.

The alternative is to change the default background of the menu. These can be modified by setting a theme for your application in the manifest and then putting in these lines:

<item name="android:panelBackground">@drawable/yourMenuDrawable</item>
<item name="android:panelFullBackground">@drawable/yourOtherMenuDrawable</item>

The normal menu uses panelFullBackground, so that should be the one you replace first. You can find the default images Android uses in yourSDKfolder/platforms/xxx/data/res/, and they're called menu_background.9.png and menu_background_fill_parent_width.9.png.

I found this information by looking at the default styles and themes files available from the Android source code website

Steve H 2010-04-10 10:42:09

what is the size of the image that you are using? I have four menu items so it takes 2 * 2 and half of the screen for each icon. I am doing the same thing. The text is displayed if I dont add an icon. The icon in my case is of 160 * 68. So it occupies all the height and width of the menu item and so the text is not displayed. Can we display the text on top of icon? Please help.

sunil 2010-04-10 11:43:02

Aha, you're right. The size of the image used matters. I hadn't noticed because I'm using the default Android images - they are all 48x48 or smaller, so it would seem you will have to resize your images.

Steve H 2010-04-10 18:27:54

Oh ok. Can we change the color of the Menu item from default white to something else, then place the icon of 48 * 48 on it and text below it? Can we do this? Let me know if you have any idea regarding this. Thanks for replying.

sunil 2010-04-12 09:48:27

I edited my answer to give more details.

Steve H 2010-04-12 10:44:49

Thanks a lot Steve. It has solved my problem. One more thing, can we also change the number of menu items in one row. Currently it has 2 * 2 structure since I have 4 menu items. But what if I wanted to have them all in one row. Is that possible? Anyways, thanks a lot again.

sunil 2010-04-13 05:24:58

I don't think you could do that without customising the menu code; by default it adjusts the the position/layout of the buttons depending on how many you have.

Steve H 2010-04-13 10:36:36

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Writing text on icon of Menu in Android?

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