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I have a vocab building app with different vocab categories displayed in a list view. I want to have a circular progress indicator for each category that shows how familiar the user is with the vocab stored in it. I know that Android has a built-in Progress Bar. The design is what I'm looking for, however, it appears that the progress bar is running continuously by default. Whereas in my case, I just want it to be static and updated only when the activity that displayed the category items are (re)opened. So to summarize again, the main difference is that the progress bar I'm looking for isn't dependent on a process that is currently running but instead from an SQLite database where I stored information on how familiar the user is with each vocab. I have searched online and I wasn't able to solve this problem since progress bar is usually implied to be dependent on a running process.

Thank you so much for any help in advance!

Charles Li
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1 Answers1

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The Android ProgressBar is designed to show the progress of a process, yes, you are correct. They can be either determinate (they go from beginning to end... like a BAR), or indeterminate (they go round and round... like a CIRCLE). Circular progressbars are indeterminate and therefore do not communicate progress per-se, only that there is something in the process of "progressing" and not finished yet.

You say you want to use this widget to communicate to the user what their PERSONAL progress is in a given area.

If you insist on using the ProgressBar widget, then you would need to use a determinate one (horizontal)...

But you do not need the progress bar widget... just make your own indicator or some kind... like

1) Using views/animations, like create a view space and tell it to fill 60%, 20%, whatever...

2) make your own set of bitmap files (say, 5 of them representing 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% on a circular progress bar)... and swap them out depending on the users progress.

Nerdy Bunz
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    if you insist on using ProgressBar, try this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12776587/android-circular-determinate-progressbar – Nerdy Bunz Jun 04 '16 at 04:54
  • Thank you for your help Boober! I'm actually not insistent on using the ProgressBar widget. I just thought I can probably take advantage of the design since I have no experience designing a circular progress/familiarity indicator and that I was hoping I can programmatically set the progress bar to not run continuously, which I wasn't able to find in the documentation of ProgressBar. I tried setProgress but it didn't work. – Charles Li Jun 04 '16 at 05:01
  • Well I think the link above may help you then. :) – Nerdy Bunz Jun 04 '16 at 05:03
  • Another thing is that for my circular familiarity indicator (progress bar), it can range from any value between 0 and 100. And since its circular I'm having difficulty thinking on how to fill it because I'll need to convert the progress level to angles filled I think. Thanks again, I'll try it out! – Charles Li Jun 04 '16 at 05:05
  • You may want to just start with a number... and finish the rest of your application first... then come back to the progressbar problem. You may find you think of a completely different way of doing it and then you've wasted all that time. – Nerdy Bunz Jun 04 '16 at 05:08
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    I actually finished the rest of my application lol so this is the last step for me until any unfixed bugs are discovered. – Charles Li Jun 04 '16 at 05:10