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How do you make the Recyclerview and Cardview transparent

I have a recyclerview that I would like to share the same background as the activity so that only the textviews inside the recyclerview are visible. I've tried things like this in the cardview and recyclerview xmls:
android:background="#android:color/transparent"
and
android:background="#null"
They haven't worked. Is this possible? I haven't found any answers in previously asked questions on here that have been successful. Any ideas appreciated!

Cardview is for beautifying layout and giving shadow to it, If you don't want to use this feature than you should avoid CardView and use simple LinearLayout, RelativeLayout, ConstraintLayout etc. and than give transparent background to it.
But still you want to use CardView, remove this line
android:background="#android:color/transparent"
and add this line to your CardView.
app:cardBackgroundColor="#android:color/transparent"

If you are using fragment, you need to add it on your container instead of replacing it:
supportFragmentManager.beginTransaction().add(YourFragment(),"tag").commit()

How do I create this Transparent Dialog/Canvas for Android?

I'm a beginner Android developer and I'm making my first app. I'd like to make a simple view that is overlayed on the map with a semi-transparent background. This is what it would hopefully look like:
As you can see, one of these dialogs/windows has a simple integer displayed and the other will have a rendered graph/chart.
What would be the best way to go about making this? A dialog? The problem with that might be that I would for the user to be able to work with the mapview below while this is displayed. And I'm not sure if a simple transparent rectangular canvas is the right way to get this done.
Any suggestions/ideas would be much appreciated. Thanks so much.

two ways to go
-Make it a FrameLayout so add MapFragment first then add a Linearlayout with orientation horizontal and make gravity top and translucent background,so it will be displayed on top of map, and it will also involve the elements inside,
-Instead of FrameLayout make it a RelativeLayout and the same process as above.
-Make the overlay as seperate Activity(which is the worst case scenario)
Sample code for overlay can be like this
<LinearLayout
....
android:divider=".." // some drawable or color whatever you want
android:showDividers="middle"
android:orientation="horizontal"
android:background="a000">
<TextView
....
android:value="58"/>
<com.example.custom.view
..../>
</LinearLayout>

I think you can use a RelativeLayout on the top of the MapFragment, with a black background and some opacity (for that you can use a drawable).
Then, on the RelativeLayout you can add other controls like TextView and ImageView
I don't recommand you to use a Dialog, since it sounds like it's not corresponding to your needs.

2D scrolling View for Images and Buttons (on smaller screens)

How can you create larger views than the screen real-estate in Android?
I am trying to recreate a view from my iOS project in Android. The view consists of a first column of static images and then a 20x13 grid of buttons (yes that's 260 in total!) which will generate another activity when clicked:
Each button throws out an integer and there is a daily background image change.
The problem for phones is screen real-estate. Fitting everything on one screen makes the buttons too small to touch properly. In the iPhone app I created bigger buttons set offscreen within a ScrollView that the user could then scroll to. To my knowledge Android does not do a 2d version of ScrollView. I have tried to use gridview dynamically, for example:
However, the dynamic buttons generated need to go VERTICALLY, they are too small to press on smaller screens AND it only scrolls in one direction.
I have also been thinking about 14 Vertical Linear/RelativeLayouts but again I am limited to screen dimensions which will make the buttons too small.

I did implement code from this link which works perfectly well. You create a custom scrollView and then insert it within your XML file:
<RelativeLayout
android:id="#+id/scene_layout"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:drawingCacheQuality="low"
android:orientation="horizontal" >
<com.example.yourappname.TwoDScrollView
android:id="#+id/scene_scroller"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:drawingCacheQuality="low" >
</com.example.yourappname.TwoDScrollView>
</RelativeLayout>
You can then put your items in a layout and be sure to sort the width/height parameters to what you need - match_parent will fix your layout to the screen.

Android. How to make dialog buttons appear a bit outside the dialog

I need to have a dialog (it's a game dialog) where buttons are at the lower corners of the dialog. Not inside the dialog but rather on the very corners (i.e. part of the button will reside over the dialog and the part will be outside of it).

First, as far as I know you can't move layout children outside their parent.
I've never tried exactly what you're going for, but I think it can be done. The trick would be to go with an activity with a dialog theme (you can find examples of these on the developer site or the API demos). Make sure your layout's root node has width and height set to wrap_content. Your root layout should be a RelativeLayout and have NO background (android:background="#0000").
Next, add another layout to your root node (FrameLayout would probably work) with a custom drawable for a background (or use the one that the default dialog uses from the framework) and width and height set to fill_parent or match_parent. Set android:padding to some dip value which pulls the background in from the edge of the dialog.
The only thing left to do would be to add your other layout elements to the root node. The FrameLayout will be drawn beneath everything else, and the padding will create the illusion of borders which do not encompass your UI.
Update
Yikes, just tried the above with good and bad results. First, you'll definitely want to look at the "Custom Dialog" example from the API demo, which makes use of:
CustomDialogActivity.java
layout/custom_dialog_activity.xml
xml/styles.xml
drawable/filled_box
Create an activity which uses the above xml layout file, and set the style for the activity to Theme.CustomDialog that you defined in xml/styles.xml. This will get you a red background for your activity. You can then edit the filled_box shape file to just have one background attribute set to invisible ("#0000"). The result should be an dialog-shaped activity with no background.
Next I tried to hack a background using my thoughts from above. The idea should be that there's a phony background drawn behind the other UI elements which does not encompass them, so it could be "shrunk" using layout_margin and not affect them. The problem here is that the phony background needs to have width and height set to relative to the other UI elements, so it sort of HAS to encompass them, so it can properly measure its own width and height relative to them.
So I think the solution could be to do most of what I've said above, except don't try the phony background thing. Just use a 9-patch drawable for your root layout background, and shrink the edges of your background to be drawn farther in than your content. You'd still use the custom theme stuff from above with an invisible window theme.

Here is a sample layout which i tried:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
>
<FrameLayout
android:orientation="vertical"
android:id="#+id/ll1"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:background="#android:drawable/dialog_frame">
</FrameLayout>
<Button android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:id="#+id/button1"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginTop="35dp"
android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
android:text="Button"></Button>
</RelativeLayout>
here is the screenshot:
hope u get the hint , goodluck

scroll view issue Android

I am adding layouts programmatically.I have added a scrollview as a parent layout and a combination of horizontal and vertical linearlayouts when I add a list view in the scrollview I am getting an issue that my UI is not taking full screen although the listview height is set to fill parent .There is a blank space added at the bottom and the height of the listview gets very small .I haven't find the reason why it's happening, is it a bug in android for scrollview ?

fill_parent won't work. Try setting android:fillViewport="true".

Without any code, I'd have to take a guess and say that your ScrollView is not set to fill_parent.
Try using layout editor in Eclipse or the hierachyviewer that ships with the Android SDK to examine your layout in the emulator and see which view is not filling the screen.