Programmatically scroll ListView

Question

I have an activity which consists of a ListView . The problem is that the background color of the activity is the same color as the ListView (whithin that activity), what causes a lot of users to miss the fact that they are able to scroll the list.

I want to achieve an effect on which when the activity loads, I will programmatically scroll the list for a few milliseconds and scroll back, so the user will understand it is scrollable.

Can it be done? (API 7)

Answer 1

Try using the method

listView.scrollTo(x, y)

or

listView.smoothScrollToPosition(...)

or

listView.smoothScrollToPositionFromTop(..., ...)

Answer 2

Instead of scrolling, what about just always showing the Scrollbars?

In your XML (can't find the docs for this, but it shows up in Eclipse as a Property under "Fade scrollbars"):

android:fadeScrollbars="false"

Or if you need / want to do it programatically, you can use setScrollbarFadingEnabled() :

yourView.setScrollbarFadingEnabled(false);

I would consider auto scrolling of the app somewhat distracting, but having the scrollbar visible is what users are accustomed to from the web.