Slight Clarification Needed on Page 54

Lord Saladin · April 6th, 2017, 09:15 PM

Hello all!

I just bought the Beginning Android Programming with Android Studio, Fourth Edition yesterday, and so far I am enjoying the book! However, I knew something had to be wrong when I attempted to add a theme to an activity as the book mentions on page 54. Consistently when I attempted to edit the android:theme line and debug the program, I would get a fatal error stating that I must use a theme from the AppCompat library.

Being relatively new to Android programming I had no idea what was causing this error. I ended up creating a new project, but noticed the the Backwards Compatibility (AppCompat) option was selected by default when creating a new project. Once I created a new project without that option, the themes loaded without issue.

Do any of you know why deselecting this option worked? And in future revisions, would it be possible to add this as a side note before you have a reader try adding a theme?

Lord Saladin · April 6th, 2017, 09:32 PM

Additional details for clarification:

- Using Nexus 5X API 24 Android 7.0 Emulator

- When trying to add the Material Theme (dark) to Activity101, running the program in debugging mode causes the app to stop in the emulator. In the Android Monitor, the error in red states:

java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{com.example.activity101/com.example.activity101.MainActivity}: java.lang.IllegalStateException: You need to use a Theme.AppCompat theme (or descendant) with this activity.

- When trying to hide the Title Bar in Activity101, running the program in debugging mode causes the app to stop in the emulator. In the Android Monitor, the error in red states:

java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{com.example.activity101_5/com.example.activity101_5.MainActivity}: android.util.AndroidRuntimeException: requestFeature() must be called before adding content.

kadmos · May 29th, 2017, 12:38 AM

went through the same mess with the first few examples trying to import the sample projects. gave up and have just been creating new projects and copying all the code manually. good exercise in the long run i suppose. but yeah, future editions should be mindful of this and include the steps necessary to make the sample projects run on the latest versions of everything. too frustrating for someone new to Android Studio to try and figure out on their own.