Showing the current selection in a listview

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 when necessary.in my program the listview is alway on the screen and the item clicked shows a new fragment to the right (similar to gmail and google talk).

To avoid the user from guessing what item has been selected I would like to show the current selection, I tried creating a selector but after it is clicked it changes back to the normal background.

how can I achieve this?

this is my selector xml

<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >
<item android:drawable="@drawable/list_item_bg2" android:state_pressed="false" android:state_selected="false"
    android:state_focused="false"/>
<item android:drawable="@drawable/list_item_selected_bg2" android:state_pressed="true"/>
<item android:drawable="@drawable/list_item_selected_bg2" android:state_pressed="false" android:state_focused="false"
    android:state_selected="true" android:state_checked="false"/>
<item android:drawable="@drawable/list_item_selected_bg2" android:state_pressed="false" android:state_focused="true"
    android:state_selected="false"/>
<item android:drawable="@drawable/list_item_selected_bg2" android:state_pressed="false" android:state_focused="false"
    android:state_selected="false" android:state_checked="true"/>
<item android:drawable="@drawable/list_item_selected_bg2" android:state_pressed="true" android:state_focused="true"
    android:state_selected="true" android:state_checked="true"/>
<item android:drawable="@drawable/list_item_selected_bg2" android:state_pressed="true"/>



</selector> 

Solution 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

Solution 2:

Your other option is to set the background of your custom list item to android:background="?android:attr/activatedBackgroundIndicator"

Solution 3:

If you use a custom layout for each row:

1. create a selector with android:state_activated="true"
2. apply it as the background of the custom layout.

an example of the selector drawable:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
 android:exitFadeDuration="@android:integer/config_shortAnimTime">
<item android:state_activated="true" android:drawable="@color/android_green" />
<item android:drawable="@android:color/transparent" />
</selector>