Finding all available styles defined by android platform themes

In several android styling tutorials parent style elements are used that i can not find in the android.R.style.* styles (http://developer.android.com/reference/android/R.style.html).

A few examples are from the http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/04/customizing-action-bar.html action bar article. Nick uses parent styles like:

<style name="MyDropDownNav" parent="android:style/Widget.Holo.Light.Spinner.DropDown.ActionBar">
...
</style>

or

<style name="MyActionBarTabStyle" parent="android:style/Widget.Holo.Light.ActionBarView_TabView">
...
</style>

Where do these parent styles come from? Is it possible to list all available parent styles?

Thanks.

As stated in the "Applying Styles and Themes" article:

The Android platform provides a large collection of styles and themes that you can use in your applications. You can find a reference of all available styles in the R.style class. To use the styles listed here, replace all underscores in the style name with a period. For example, you can apply the Theme_NoTitleBar theme with "@android:style/Theme.NoTitleBar".

The R.style reference, however, is not well documented and does not thoroughly describe the styles, so viewing the actual source code for these styles and themes will give you a better understanding of what style properties each one provides. For a better reference to the Android styles and themes, see the following source code:

• Android Styles (styles.xml)
• Android Themes (themes.xml)

These files will help you learn through example. For instance, in the Android themes source code, you'll find a declaration for <style name="Theme.Dialog">. In this definition, you'll see all of the properties that are used to style dialogs that are used by the Android framework.

For "android:style/Widget.Holo.Light.ActionBarView_TabView" see: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/R.style.html#Widget_Holo_Light_ActionBar_TabView ...and note the API level it was introduced at!

For "android:style/Widget.Holo.Light.Spinner.DropDown.ActionBar" try: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/R.style.html#Widget_Holo_Light_DropDownItem_Spinner

The latter is just my best guess - I can't get the list to actually drop down.

Parent attribute is a optional one while creating your own themes or styles. Basically parent attributes are used for inheriting the styles which are already defined in the platform itself.

If we wish to inherit a theme or style and overwriting some features, we can use parent attribute.

Here's a link for the all available platform defined styles.

And one more tip :

If you want to inherit your own style that you created by yourself means follow this example to inherit.

    <style name="MyDropDownNav.Red">
        <item name="android:textColor">#FF0000</item>
    </style>