Show dialog while loading new screen

Question

I have a front screen with a button which opens a second screen. The second screen can take a few seconds to load so I want to display a dialog while loading. My problem is the dialog does not display while loading second screen, but it displays when I return to first page from the second page. If I comment out the "startActivity" to open second page the dialog shows fine. I'm fairly new to android programming - I guess it has something to do with threads.

//code snippet from inside onCreate:
NewGame.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
         public void onClick(View arg0) {
//does not get displayed before 2nd page opens 
          showDialog(DIALOG2_KEY); 
//shows fine if next 2 lines commented out
             Intent i = new Intent(screen1.this, SudukuXL.class);
            startActivity(i);

I've dealt with the dialog showing on returning to the front screen using onPause(). I've tried using threads to seperate the dialog from the startActivity but I've had no luck. Any help would be appreciated.

I used code from Android examples to create dialog. I include below for reference: protected Dialog onCreateDialog(int id) { switch (id) {

       case DIALOG2_KEY: {
           ProgressDialog dialog = new ProgressDialog(this);
           dialog.setMessage("Loading...");
           dialog.setIndeterminate(true);
           dialog.setCancelable(true);
           return dialog;
       }
   }
   return null;

}

Answer 1

Hello,

IMHO, I'd rather prefer to use ViewSwitcher instead of dialog. But anyway I think you should show dialog (or switch view) in "second screen". Simply let your "second" activity to start and then show dialog in onCreate() while proccessing some stuff, and after finishing just remove dialog(or switch view). My advice is to use AsyncTask or like this to do something in background!!! Also this topic can help you

Answer 2

I've tried displaying a dialog until xml filled but haven't got it quite right. Here is one way I tried:

public void onCreate(Bundle icicle)
           {
             super.onCreate(icicle);
             showDialog(DIALOG2_KEY);

             new Thread(new Runnable(){
                    public void run(){
                         setContentView(R.layout.saved); 
                   }
              }).start();
               //   removeDialog(DIALOG2_KEY);

I tried a few other ways around including swapping what is inside thread and order of execution etc. None of ways works. The above code shows dialog quickly (excellent) but then crashes.