Introducing TwoWayView
February 21, 2013
We’ve been working hard on a new iteration of the tabs UI for Firefox for Android. The new UI includes a horizontal scrolling tabs tray to make better use of the screen real estate on phones and tablets in different orientations.
Unfortunately, the Android platform doesn’t provide any AdapterView with horizontal scrolling support nor could I find any non-naive open source implementation out there. Enter TwoWayView.
TwoWayView is an AdapterView that can be scrolled either vertically or horizontally. Just set the orientation of the view and it will do the right thing for you. In its current state, it supports all the usual AdapterView APIs (selection handling, adapter, item click and long click listener, etc), view recycling, list selector, choice mode (single and multiple), edge glow, and scrollbars. Have a look at the sample app to see it in action.
The code is based on various bits and pieces of Android’s AdapterView, AbsListView, and ListView. It uses the necessary wrappers from Android’s Support Library in order to keep backwards compatibility.
The big missing features right now are focus handling, keyboard navigation, and accessibility. I’ll be working on those in the next few weeks besides all the necessary bug fixes—I don’t recommend using TwoWayView on production code just yet.
For now, feedback, bug reports, and patches are very welcome! Enjoy!