Showing the current selection in a listview

Question

As seen in the tablet version of gmail and google talk I am trying to show the current selection in a listview. I know this is not standard practice and should be avoided wh

Answer 1

What Gmail and similar apps use is the activated state, with an appropriate row layout. See:

• Setting Android Background & Persistence Menu Bar - Using attribute on older versions causes crash - Is there a theme /pattern approach?
• Change colour of activated list item background on Honeycomb

In a nutshell, you:

• Use a row layout with an activated background (e.g., android.R.layout.simple_list_item_activated_1)
• Use setChoiceMode(ListView.CHOICE_MODE_SINGLE) on your ListView
• "Check" the row that should be activated using setItemChecked() on your ListView to enable the "activated" state and have the persistent highlight