Show ImageView partly behind transparent ActionBar

Question

The Google Maps application has a transparent ActionBar, through which the map is visible.

Answer 1

You can also set it at run-time:

requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_ACTION_BAR_OVERLAY);

This will the ActionBar a semi-transparent floating bar.

Like any requestWindowFeature..., this should be called before adding content.

After the setContentView, you can then set a background from your Drawable with this:

getActionBar().setBackgroundDrawable(getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.actionbar_bg));

Change getActionBar with getSupportActionBar for ActionBarSherlock

actionbar_bg.xml with the root element of shape:

Although I find Tomik's solution great, this will be useful for those one-off cases for a few activities rather than an across the board style.