How to perform a fade animation on Activity transition?

Question

I am codifiying a transition effect between my logo activity and my Main activity, but I have the problem that before vanish the activity move to top:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <set xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"     android:shareInterpolator="false" >      <alpha         android:duration="2000"         android:fromAlpha="0.0"         android:toAlpha="1.0" >     </alpha>  </set> 

How could I improve this code to get only a vanish effect?

Answer 1

You could create your own .xml animation files to fade in a new Activity and fade out the current Activity:

fade_in.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <alpha xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"            android:interpolator="@android:anim/accelerate_interpolator"            android:fromAlpha="0.0" android:toAlpha="1.0"            android:duration="500" /> 

fade_out.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <alpha xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"            android:interpolator="@android:anim/accelerate_interpolator"            android:fromAlpha="1.0" android:toAlpha="0.0"            android:fillAfter="true"            android:duration="500" /> 

Use it in code like that: (Inside your Activity)

Intent i = new Intent(this, NewlyStartedActivity.class); startActivity(i); overridePendingTransition(R.anim.fade_in, R.anim.fade_out); 

The above code will fade out the currently active Activity and fade in the newly started Activity resulting in a smooth transition.

UPDATE: @Dan J pointed out that using the built in Android animations improves performance, which I indeed found to be the case after doing some testing. If you prefer working with the built in animations, use:

overridePendingTransition(android.R.anim.fade_in, android.R.anim.fade_out); 

Notice me referencing android.R instead of R to access the resource id.

UPDATE: It is now common practice to perform transitions using the Transition class introduced in API level 19.