progressbar setvisible not working

Question

I have a layout like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:ads="http://schemas.android.com/apk/lib/com.google.ads"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:orientation="horizontal" 
android:background="@drawable/menu_background"
>

<ProgressBar 
  android:id="@+id/aPBar"
  android:layout_width="wrap_content"
  android:layout_height="wrap_content"
  android:layout_centerInParent="true"
  style="@android:style/Widget.ProgressBar.Inverse"/>

 ...

</RelativeLayout>

And in my onCreate method I do this to hide the ProgressBar at first:

LayoutInflater inflater = getLayoutInflater();
RelativeLayout layout = (RelativeLayout)inflater.inflate(R.layout.achievements_screen, null);

progressBar=(ProgressBar)layout.findViewById(R.id.aPBar);
progressBar.setVisibility(View.INVISIBLE);

But the ProgressBar is still visible all the time ... I also tried View.GONE.

When i set

android:visible="gone"

in the XML file, the ProgressBar doesnt show up, but I can't make it appear with

 progressBar.setVisibility(View.Visible);

Answer 1

You are inflating a new view using the Layout Inflater. This is NOT the view currently on the screen.

Therefore changing it's visibility won't affect the screen UI.

Further up your Activity you must have called setContentView and this is the layout that is visible on your UI.

Therefore calling:

findViewById will return your progress bar on the screen, but calling layout.findViewById will return that layouts progress bar (correctly) but that is not the progressBar you can see on your screen.