Can I hide an image button on a layout, (dimensions and background) until a call to set visible?

Question

I have a hidden image button in one of my xmls layouts, with a background set to a drawable image. I set the visibility to invisible, as I only want the image to display every once in a while. The problem is, even if the drawable isn't shown, the image button still takes us space - Is there a way to hide the background image, and make it's dimensions 0 until I call on it to be shown in my main class?

Thanks!

Edit: So in my xml, how would I write that?

<ImageButton android:id="@+id/myimage" android:visibility="invisible" 
android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
android:layout_gravity="center" android:background="@drawable/my_image"></ImageButton>

I want to have the image always gone, unless a certain condition occurs, I then want the image to be visible under that one condition. So in my xml I would need to be set to GONE, but in my conditional statement so I say something like:

myimage.setVisibility(SHOW);?

Answer 1

Try setting the visibility to GONE

Answer 2

Don't set the width/height to zero, that's ugly. The view will always take up the space, unless you change the visibility setting. This is the code you want:

myImageButton.setVisibility(View.GONE);

View.GONE - invisible, takes up no space View.INVISIBLE - invisible, but still takes up space View.VISIBLE - use this to bring it back