I'm developing for Android with eclipse and was attempting to connect some extra Widgets to my (normally working) UI, but i was met with a blank grey UI - all my UI Graphics Widgets(and Buttons) gone -

[attachment=34402:adt not updating.jpg]

and I also had this

This version of the rendering library is more recent than your version of ADT plug-in. Please update ADT plug-in

(BTW, googling to Stack Overflow, I found that people using Android Studio also encounter this problem, but their solution wasn't for eclipse)

Attempting to update via Help->Check for Updates, I had this

[attachment=34403:adt not updating 2.jpg]

I then tried to update via Help->Install New Software, clicking Add and choosing/adding ADT Plugin - https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/ and checking Developer Tools, but the next and finish buttons are disabled, so I was unable to install new software (or update) and can't get my UI/Widgets back

[attachment=34404:adt not updating 3.jpg]

Any help on how I can update ADT Plugin and get my widgets back?

I would appreciate it if anyone can help (Or a-safe-work-around-hack if this is due to lack of support for eclipse)

[Note: switching to Android Studio has not worked for me. I know it works for many people, but several months ago I made numerous attempts to port to Android Studio, but had so many serious issues, IIRC ranging for Gradle builds problems, pop-ups that give me errors no matter what options I choose, numerous unresolved errors when porting projects from eclipse ..... to mention a few. I posted so many of the problems on 'Mobile and Console' subforum but they remained unsolved and I was stuck for so long with the same problems ....

I know Android doesn't provide support for eclipse anymore but so far my project development has been going fine until now. I prefer to try to resolve this one problem on eclipse than the numerous unending problems I faced on Android Studio. ]

The ADT plugin is here: https://developer.android.com/studio/tools/sdk/eclipse-adt.html

If the latest version of that isn't good enough, then that route is basically closed.

You can also look at the Andmore project - https://projects.eclipse.org/projects/tools.andmore - which appears to be more up-to-date. Unfortunately it's not clear to me exactly what you need to download from there or how to use it, but if you're familiar with Eclipse it might make more sense to you.

Personally I would advise biting the bullet and getting Android Studio to work - sticking with Eclipse is only going to get harder over time.

Thanks for the links, though when I tried in eclipse it says "site cannot be found". And I could not find ADT download for eclipse link in the second link

Personally I would advise biting the bullet and getting Android Studio to work - sticking with Eclipse is only going to get harder over time.

I appreciate your advice though I'm not sure what you really mean here, ... seems like you think there is some push or effort I could make to get Android Studio to work and I'm just reluctant to. If you read the footnote of my original post - I explained how my efforts went ... (maybe its because i'm not skilled enough or whatever...) but I could not get AS to work ... I posted issues I had, which where many and overwhelming but got no solutions. This current issue with eclipse is significant, but compared to what I encountered with AS looks solvable

Still hoping some one has an idea on this, thnx

If you can't get Android Studio to work then the problem is at your end, I'm afraid. That is the only official Android development platform, going forward, so either you find out how to fix it or you basically give up on being able to deploy to modern devices. If I were you I'd be trying to work through those issues, because the community using that environment is bigger and it is still being maintained.

If you truly won't do that, then I can only suggest you ask on the Eclipse community forum about how to use the new plugin. Unfortunately the threads there seem to suggest that it isn't really ready for use yet.

Have you possibly updated your sdk recently, and/or changed the target sdk version you are building for?

I think the problem might be a too new SDK version, that the UI preview can't handle.

You could try lower the targetSdkVersion in your AndroidManifest.xml, possibly also changing the build target in the project properties to one with a lower API level.

Might be a problem if you really need the higher API version, but maybe you can switch down temporarily to get your UI changes in.

Only other option I can think of is doing it "by hand" by editing the xml files directly.

Have you possibly updated your sdk recently, and/or changed the target sdk version you are building for?

I haven't recently, but I had to delete the cache and ddms.cfg from the "user/.../.android" folder often recently due to persistent "android sdk content loader stuck at 0%" issue.

I also had to temporarily delete .Project folder in \workspace\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.resources\\, then overwrite it back to solve the same "loader stuck at 0%" problem

Don't know if these actions caused it. I would try to reverse these actions to see if it can solve it

Might be a problem if you really need the higher API version, but maybe you can switch down temporarily to get your UI changes in.

...

Only other option I can think of is doing it "by hand" by editing the xml files directly.

Seem v good suggestions, I would also try these

Many thanx @Olof Hedman

finally fixed my eclipse xml renderer and got my graphics UI back, thanks again @Olof your suggestions helped

Now full code is working as should do...