title: Why do child views inherit the alpha value from parent layout
body: <p>In my app I've set a background image of the top level linearlayout and then to fade the background I set its alpha to .2 but this creates an odd problem in that it also sets the alpha for all children of the layout as well, even if I explicitly define a different alpha value in the children. </p>
  
  <p>Is it possible to set the alpha value of a parent and not affect that of the child? </p>
  
  <p>What is there a proper way to set the alpha on top level view without affecting the alpha on that views children?</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?&gt;
  &lt;LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
      android:id="@+id/ll1" 
      android:orientation="vertical"
      android:layout_width="fill_parent"  
      android:layout_height="fill_parent"
      android:gravity="center"
      android:background="@drawable/bg"
      android:alpha="0.2"&gt;
          &lt;Button android:id="@+id/btn1" 
              android:text="Set 1"
              android:layout_width="300px"
              android:layout_height="150px" 
              android:layout_gravity="center" 
              android:background="@drawable/button1"
              android:tag="1"
              android:alpha="1"/&gt;
          &lt;Button android:id="@+id/btn2" 
              android:text="Set 2"
              android:layout_width="300px" 
              android:layout_height="150px" 
              android:layout_gravity="center" 
              android:background="@drawable/button2"
              android:tag="2"/&gt;
  &lt;/LinearLayout&gt;
  </code></pre>