I've spent about 6 hours on this so far, and been hitting nothing but roadblocks. The general premise is that there is some row in a ListView (whether it's generated by the adapter, or added as a header view) that contains an EditText widget and a Button. All I want to do is be able to use the jogball/arrows, to navigate the selector to individual items like normal, but when I get to a particular row -- even if I have to explicitly identify the row -- that has a focusable child, I want that child to take focus instead of indicating the position with the selector.
I've tried many possibilities, and have so far had no luck.
layout:
<ListView
android:id="@android:id/list"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
/>
Header view:
EditText view = new EditText(this);
listView.addHeaderView(view, null, true);
Assuming there are other items in the adapter, using the arrow keys will move the selection up/down in the list, as expected; but when getting to the header row, it is also displayed with the selector, and no way to focus into the EditText using the jogball. Note: tapping on the EditText will focus it at that point, however that relies on a touchscreen, which should not be a requirement.
ListView apparently has two modes in this regard:
1. setItemsCanFocus(true): selector is never displayed, but the EditText can get focus when using the arrows. Focus search algorithm is hard to predict, and no visual feedback (on any rows: having focusable children or not) on which item is selected, both of which can give the user an unexpected experience.
2. setItemsCanFocus(false): selector is always drawn in non-touch-mode, and EditText can never get focus -- even if you tap on it.
To make matters worse, calling editTextView.requestFocus() returns true, but in fact does not give the EditText focus.
What I'm envisioning is basically a hybrid of 1 & 2, where rather than the list setting if all items are focusable or not, I want to set focusability for a single item in the list, so that the selector seamlessly transitions from selecting the entire row for non-focusable items, and traversing the focus tree for items that contain focusable children.
Any takers?