Existing patches for android tabwidget to allow tabs on left-hand side?

Question

My employer is having me work on an android application with very specific UI requirements. Specifically, we need an interface that looks exactly like a TabWidget interface.

Answer 1

(Note that I added a better answer further down, past the line. I'm leaving this top one in in case it better fits someone else's needs.)

Yeah, I've been dealing with the same issue. I have a somewhat clunky solution. I noticed that you can rotate pretty much any View with setRotate. Unfortunately, this only rotates its image, or something, and doesn't fully deal with issues or placement or size or alignment. Even so, I've managed to cobble together something that kinda compensates for it, though it's only half done (doesn't quite work right if you rotate to portrait orientation). The following gets called whenever the tablet is rotated or the layout gets rearranged or whatever.

private LinearLayout llMain;
private LinearLayout ll1;
private LinearLayout mainView;
private TabHost myTabHost;

public void setStuff() {
    Display display = ((WindowManager) getSystemService(WINDOW_SERVICE)).getDefaultDisplay();
    if (display.getOrientation() == 0 || display.getOrientation() == 2) {
        ViewGroup.LayoutParams lp = myTabHost.getLayoutParams();
        int top = 0;
        int left = 0;
        int height = 696;
        int width = 1280;
        int centerx = (width / 2) + left;
        int centery = (height / 2) + top;
        lp.height = width;
        lp.width = height;
        myTabHost.setLayoutParams(lp);
        myTabHost.setTranslationX(centerx - (height / 2));
        myTabHost.setTranslationY(centery - (width / 2));
        lp = mainView.getLayoutParams();
        lp.width = 1280;
        lp.height = 696;
        mainView.setLayoutParams(lp);
        lp = llMain.getLayoutParams();
        lp.width = 1280;
        lp.height = 696;
        llMain.setLayoutParams(lp);

        ll1.setRotation(-90);
        lp = ll1.getLayoutParams();
        lp.height = 696;
        lp.width = 1141;
        ll1.setLayoutParams(lp);
        left = 0;
        top = 0;
        height = 696;
        width = 1141;
        centerx = (width / 2) + left;
        centery = (height / 2) + top;
        ll1.setTranslationX(centery - (width / 2));
        ll1.setTranslationY(centerx - (height / 2));
        //ll1.setTranslationX(tx);
        //ll1.setTranslationY(ty);
    } else {
        ViewGroup.LayoutParams lp = myTabHost.getLayoutParams();
        int top = 0;
        int left = 0;
        int height = 1280;
        int width = 696;
        int centerx = (width / 2) + left;
        int centery = (height / 2) + top;
        lp.height = width;
        lp.width = height;
        myTabHost.setLayoutParams(lp);
        myTabHost.setTranslationX(centerx - (height / 2));
        myTabHost.setTranslationY(centery - (width / 2));
        lp = mainView.getLayoutParams();
        lp.width = 696;
        lp.height = 1280;
        mainView.setLayoutParams(lp);
        lp = llMain.getLayoutParams();
        lp.width = 696;
        lp.height = 1280;
        llMain.setLayoutParams(lp);

        ll1.setRotation(-90);
        lp = ll1.getLayoutParams();
        lp.height = 1141;
        lp.width = 696;
        ll1.setLayoutParams(lp);
        left = 0;
        top = 0;
        height = 1141;
        width = 696;
        centerx = (width / 2) + left;
        centery = (height / 2) + top;
        ll1.setTranslationX(centery - (width / 1));
        ll1.setTranslationY(centerx - (height / 1));
        //ll1.setTranslationX(tx);
        //ll1.setTranslationY(ty);
    }
}

@Override
public void onConfigurationChanged(Configuration newConfig) {
    super.onConfigurationChanged(newConfig);
    setStuff();
    //setContentView(R.layout.main);
} 

llMain contains mainView contains myTabHost contains ll1; you'll need to have assigned them as such in the initialization code. The idea is that the TabHost gets rotated clockwise, and its dimensions have to be manually swapped so that its containers know that it's a different size/shape, now, otherwise the edges get cut off. Also, it some calculations are done so that it get rotated around the right point, or at least ends up in the right place. The results didn't always make sense, so I just changed stuff until it worked, at least in landscape mode. The contents of the TabHost get rotated, too, so there's code in there that rotates it back, at least the first tab, which is ll1. Other tabs would need to be rotated back similarly. I messed around with this for a while, and there may be some things that are unnecessary. For example, the mainView. I think that doesn't need to be there. Oh, and if the TabHost is in a different place, the numbers will need to be adjusted somehow. Good luck with that. Anyway, I hope this helps somebody. Man, Android GUI is so aggravating...I wish they'd fix it.... I'll admit, though, that despite all the obstacles and frustrations, rotation of any component is pretty cool. I just wish everything else worked like you'd expect.

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Hey, I just figured out how to get it to do it properly! The labels stay horizontal, so that may or may not be a good thing, depending on what you want, but anyway:

This XML file defines an empty tabhost with the tabs on the right. Just add the tabs in your code; there're posts around for that. Copy/alter/do whatever you need to do to make it fit your needs. Also, because it's cool, I added a scroll view around the tabwidget, so it'll automatically allow scrolling if you have too many tabs. Get rid of it if you don't want it. Got the scroll thing mostly from http://java.dzone.com/articles/scrolling-tabs-android. Yay!