How can I keep current screen (contentView) when l Iaunch a new Activity

I have an NoContentViewActivity which has no Content View (i.e. I did not call setContentView() in the onCreate of my Activity). My question is how can I keep the content view of the launching activity on the screen? Right now, I am getting a blank screen whenever I launch NoCon开发者_开发技巧tentViewActivity? I want the content view of the launching activity (the activity which start the NoContentViewActivity) to show on the screen.

Thank you for any help.

Excuse me, people, but my guess is that hap497 wants exactly the thing he wants. There is a bunch of situations where invisible activity would fit while Service will not.

Imaging you want to show a set of dialogs, each next of them is shown after the previous one based on the user choices. And imaging you want to have this (exactly the same) functionality to be available when pressing different buttons on different (lots of them) activities. To write the same dialog processing logic would be an overkill whether the transparent activity will deal nicely...

Anyway, as stated above, all you need to do is to specify:

    android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Translucent"

or

    android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Translucent.NoTitleBar"

(if you do not want a titlebar either)

It sounds like you'd be better off using a Service than an Activity. Activities are for code that is to be viewed; Services are for code that runs without a UI, which is what it sounds like you want.

An Activity with no Views assigned is an empty black screen, so it will still obscure the calling Activity. You could make your Activity transparent by assigning it a transparent theme:

android:theme="@style/Theme.Translucent"

Keep in mind though, that your invisible Activity will have focus, so the user won't be able to interact with the Activity underneath.

Why do you want to create a fully transparent Activity? As Daniel suggests, a Service might be a better solution to your problem if you genuinely don't want any user interaction.