The ShowcaseView library is designed to highlight and showcase specific parts of apps to the user with a distinctive and attractive overlay. This library is great for pointing out points of interest for users, gestures, or obscure but useful items.

The library is based on the "Cling" view found in the Launcher on Ice-Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean, but extended to be easier to use.

ShowcaseView v2 is nearly fully automated, providing a much easier experience adding the library to your apps. A ShowcaseView can now be set up with only one line of code!. Now, to add a ShowcaseView to an Activity, simply call one of the ShowcaseView.insertShowcaseView(...) functions. These functions return the ShowcaseView initialised, and so can undergo further modification. To customise the ShowcaseView further, you can supply insertShowcaseView(...) with a ShowcaseView.Config argument which can customise:

• Whether to block touches on the ShowcaseView
• Show or hide an "OK" button, which hides the ShowcaseView
• Change whether the ShowcaseView is used only once, or multiple times (TYPE_SINGLE_SHOT or TYPE_NO_LIMIT)
• Where to insert the ShowcaseView in the heirarchy (INSERT_TO_CONTENT will not cover the ActionBar; INSERT_TO_DECOR will)

v2 brings the ability to showcase items on the ActionBar. Currently built in showcase-able things are:

• The home button
• Your application title or a Spinner if you're using that navigation type
• Any ActionItem - requires only the item's ID
• The Overflow icon

These are showcased using insertShowcaseViewWithType(..), which is demonstrated in the sample app. These have taken a huge amount of reflection to get working, so may be quite buggy. If it is a nightmare to use, please open issues!

Gestures can now be indicated using animateGesture(...), which returns a NineOldAndroids AnimatorSet, which can be gestured simply by calling start() on it. If you want to make your own gestures, getHand() will return the View which contains the Ghostly Hand. You can also quickly point to something using the pointTo(..) methods.

Styles are included to maintain consistently in ShowcaseViews. Buttons should use the style ClingButton, with title text using ClingTitleText and standard text using ClingText.

At the moment, this library is quite bare. However, I hope to add the following features very soon:

• Support for showcasing raw co-ordinates Use setShowcasePosition(x,y)
• Support for showcasing ActionBar items Added in v2
• Variable sized circles for showcasing
• Easier usage This is what v2 is for!
• On-demand showing and hiding of ShowcaseView Use show() and hide()

Copyright Alex Curran (+Alex) © 2012. All rights reserved.

This library is disributed under an Apache 2.0 License.