Develop Reference

Submenu not showing on Android 2.3

I have an application with a Navigation Drawer and using Action Bar Compat and one of the options has an action bar button with a sub-menu. It is working fine on Android 3.0 and UP but not so good for Android 2.3:
<item
android:id="#+id/overflowButton"
android:icon="#drawable/ic_action_overflow"
android:showAsAction="always"
android:title="#string/word_menu"
yourapp:showAsAction="always">
<menu>
<item
android:id="#+id/usedRemainingMenuItem"
android:title="#string/menu_remaining"
/>
</menu>
<item>
What happens is that the app starts and I click on the button and it is fine. Then I choose another option from the Navigation Drawer, go back, and that button is no longer showing the sub-menu when clicked (I get the button action click on code).

Should my Activity have menu as well as Action bar icons?

I am developing an application of my own and was reading this: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/menus.html
It says:
Beginning with Android 3.0, the Menu button is deprecated (some
devices don't have one), so you should migrate toward using the action
bar to provide access to actions and other options.
My app is only targeting android 4.2+. Does that mean I should present the menu options as only action bar icons ? What if there is not enough room available ?

Items that do not fit in the action bar will automatically be relegated to the overflow menu. All you have to do is set the android:showAsAction="ifRoom" property in your xml for the menu item.
This basically tells the system that this menu item should be displayed as an action icon if there is room available. If not, it should be shown as an overflow menu item.

It means that there is no more hardware Menu Button. Your menu items will be showed in popup under "three-doted icon". In menu.xml you can configure everything:
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
tools:context=".MainActivity">
<item
android:id="#+id/action_example"
android:title="#string/action_example"
android:showAsAction="ifRoom" /> <!-- attention -->
<item
android:id="#+id/action_settings"
android:title="#string/action_settings"
android:orderInCategory="100"
android:showAsAction="never" />
</menu>
Read more here
If you need a lot of icons to be showed you can split ActionBar(second(bottom) menu bar will appear).
documantation of splitting
I hope mine explanation will be good enough:)

ActionBarSherlock collapseActionView

I'm having a problem when I try to set one item in my actionbar as always visible and 4 more icons as dropdown items with the following layout:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >
<item
android:id="#+id/search_movies"
android:icon="#drawable/action_search"
android:showAsAction="always"
android:title="Search"/>
<item
android:id="#+id/movies"
android:icon="#drawable/action_video"
android:showAsAction="collapseActionView"
android:title="Movies"/>
<item
android:id="#+id/theaters"
android:icon="#drawable/action_location_map"
android:showAsAction="collapseActionView"
android:title="Theaters"/>
<item
android:id="#+id/preferences"
android:icon="#drawable/action_settings"
android:showAsAction="collapseActionView"
android:title="Preferences"/>
<item
android:id="#+id/contact"
android:icon="#drawable/action_about"
android:showAsAction="collapseActionView"
android:title="Contact"/>
</menu>
The result is just the first item showing and the rest are not visible, not even as a dropdown. This is using ActionBarSherlock and a 2.3 Android device.
The question is, how can I get the icons to follow this layout:
EDIT:
The problem I had was because when you are using the actionbar with a device that has a "menu" hardware button the 3-dot dropdown does not shows off, the 4 other items are only displayed if you press the menu hardware button. Does anyone knows if this behaviour can be modified?

Hmmm, maybe I misunderstood, but if you wish to places those remaining four items into the overflow action menu (the 3-dot icon) then using android:showAsAction="never" instead of "collapseActionView" should do it.
...Tried a couple ways, but this did the trick:
Force overflow menu in ABS

I've met the same problem and my solution is quite simple. (I didn't use HoloEverywhere.)
The idea comes from the ABS sample project, whose drop-down menu can be displayed on pre-4.0 devices as well by using a submenu. So, my idea is using a submenu to disguise the 3-dot icon. Here's the code:
#Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
SubMenu sub = menu.addSubMenu("More");
sub.getItem().setShowAsAction(MenuItem.SHOW_AS_ACTION_ALWAYS);
sub.getItem().setIcon(R.drawable.ic_menu);
getSupportMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.activity_main, sub);
return true;
}
Since the "More" menu doesn't have a MenuItem.SHOW_AS_ACTION_WITH_TEXT attribute, so the word "More"(or whatever you named) will actually not be displayed on the action bar. The only displayed icon R.drawable.ic_menu can be copied from ABS source code res/drawable-xxdpi folders named "abs__ic_menu_moreoverflow_normal_holo_dark.png", which is the so-called 3-dot icon. And the R.menu.activity_main is your menu xml.
It works!

Display action bar menu button

Is there any possible way to display the three dots menu in action bar on divices with hardware menu button? Like Samsung Galaxy etc.

Looks like your answer is at the link below. There's an explanation of why you wouldn't want to do it, and another answer providing a hack to do it anyway (on android 4.x devices).
How to force use of overflow menu on devices with menu button

The guide says:
…
Menu items that are not promoted to an action item are available in the overflow menu, revealed by either the device Menu button (when available) or by an "overflow menu" button in the action bar (when the device does not include a Menu button).

In my app I have nested menu like:
//menu.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item android:id="#+id/three_dots_item"
android:icon="#drawable/ic_three_dots"
android:title="#string/title"
android:showAsAction="always">
<menu>
<!-- items to show -->
</menu>
</item>
</menu>
It's not real overflow, but it's a simple workaround.

This is worked for me
Use
<uses-sdk
android:minSdkVersion="8"
/>
instead of
<uses-sdk
android:minSdkVersion="8"
android:targetSdkVersion="17"/>
in manifest xml

Android 3.0 ActionBar Gmail Search

In the Gmail app, the search bar moves all the way to the left when you click on the search icon. Does anyone know how to recreate this effect? The current way I have it, the icon expands when clicked, but doesn't move to the left like the Gmail app. Here is my menu xml file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item android:id="#+id/menu_search"
android:title="Search"
android:icon="#drawable/ic_menu_search"
android:showAsAction="ifRoom"
android:actionViewClass="android.widget.SearchView"
/>
</menu>

Take a look at this SO Question and see if that is what you're referring to:
Contextual Action Bar in Honeycomb
and
Contextual Action Bar in Honeycomb

The Gmail app seems to simply have a search icon in the menu and when you click on this it will add SearchView as the current navigation view with getActionBar.setCustomView().
There are a few gotchas when doing this, for example handling when it should be removed etc but if handled well it can lead to a nice user experience. But it may not be worth the hassle though, the regular expandable SearchView should be sufficient for most applications.