Programmatically Translate View Pre-Honeycomb

Question

How can I programmatically translate an arbitrary view without using an animation (android.view.animation.*)?

API 11 introduced setTranslationX

Answer 1

One alternative to TranslateAnimation is to subclass a View and translate the Canvas on dispatchDraw. Something like:

 public class TranslateView extends View {

        private float mTranslationX = 0;
        private float mTranslationY = 0;
        private boolean mWillUseSDKTranslation = true;

        @Override
        protected void dispatchDraw(final Canvas canvas) {
            if (mWillUseSDKTranslation == false) {
                // keep track of the current state
                canvas.save(Canvas.MATRIX_SAVE_FLAG);
                // translate
                canvas.translate(mTranslationX, mTranslationY);
                // draw it
                super.dispatchDraw(canvas);
                // restore to the previous state
                canvas.restore();
            } else {
                super.dispatchDraw(canvas);
            }
        }

        public void setTranslationValue(final float aTranslationX, final float aTranslationY) {
            if (android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT < Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB) {
                mWillUseSDKTranslation = false;
                mTranslationX = aTranslationX;
                mTranslationY = aTranslationY;
                invalidate();
            } else {
                setTranslationX(aTranslationX);
                setTranslationY(aTranslationY);
            }
        }

    }