Text or Icon in action bar, stuck with the 3 dots - android

I'm making an android app in Eclipse. I want to place a text or icon in the action bar, but when I am writing in menu.xml, which looks like this:
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >
<item
android:id="#+id/createnew"
android:orderInCategory="1"
android:showAsAction="ifRoom"
android:title="CREATE"/>
</menu>
it puts it in the options menu. I want to separate it.
I see this in the app when I run it:
(sorry can't post pictures because I don't have enough rep)
I want to CREATE next to the option menu like this for example:

Since you are using the AppCompat Actionbar, you need to use a custom namespaced showAsAction attribute.
It should look something like this:
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:yourapp="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto" >
<item
android:id="#+id/createnew"
android:orderInCategory="1"
yourapp:showAsAction="ifRoom"
android:title="CREATE"/>
</menu>
Note that this uses yourapp:showAsAction instead of android:showAsAction. This is because the showAsAction attribute is not available on pre-Honeycomb devices and is provided by the support library.
For more information, read the Action Bar developer guide.

It's caused by this line
android:showAsAction="ifRoom"
That tells Android to put it up there if it's going to fit nicely. If you want it up there no matter the fit use
android:showAsAction="always"

Related

Customize Android Menu Navigation Drawer

i am using the Support Library Navigation Drawer and I want to customize it.
My Current Menu looks like this:
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
android:background="?android:attr/activatedBackgroundIndicator">
<group
android:id="#+id/DrawerMainGroup"
android:checkableBehavior="single"
android:background="?android:attr/activatedBackgroundIndicator"
>
<item
android:id="#+id/drawer_home"
android:checked="true"
android:icon="#drawable/ic_home"
android:title="#string/home"
/>...
I want to have another icon on this. Do you think it is possible?
I searched the Web and could not fin anything useful for me.
Both images will be dynamically loaded. For example:
I have a app where i can get videos,pictures etc. That is the first Icon. Next to this, there should be a icon if this site is on homescreen or not.
Like: (IconType)(IconOnHome) Text
I don't know if this is even possible. I found app:actionlayout already, but i am not sure if I could load different images in to the xml.

Android Menu Bar

I have created a sample android application that just displays some text and i can see that the menu bar at the top of the activity contains name of the application but not the icon of the application. The menu is also very thin just containing application name with a small font. Going through various tutorial i found that we have to select a particular menu style while creating the application to have a menu that contains both application name and icon, but my application just contains application name and the menu is very thin. Is it possible to increase the menu height now and add application icon to it dynamically or by making some changes in menu xml file?
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item android:id="#+id/app_name" android:icon="#drawable/ic_launcher"
android:title="My App" />
</menu>
If you want to customize the ActionBar, here you are a complete tutorial for it:
How can I implement custom Action Bar with custom buttons in Android?
It's very good an complete for customizing almost everything, so I recommend it to you.
Even tough, I ask you to change your question in order to make more clear the target of it, now you know what you were triying to mean ;)
<menu xmlns:tools="schemas.android.com/tools"
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
tools:context="com.example.sample.getMsgActivity"
xmlns:yourapp="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto">
<!-- Search, should appear as action button -->
<item android:id="#+id/action_write"
android:icon="#drawable/ic_action_refresh"
android:title="#string/action_write"
yourapp:showAsAction="ifRoom" />
<!-- Settings, should always be in the overflow -->
<item android:id="#+id/action_read"
android:title="#string/action_read"
yourapp:showAsAction="never" />
REMEMBER: clean, then build. it should work then.

Android menu item showAsAction="always" doesn't work

I have tried setting the:
android:showAsAction=".."
to every one of these:
ifRoom, never, withText, always, collapseActionView
but I always got the same result, which is not having any buttons on the action bar, so I have to press the 'menu' button.
Here is a picture of the menu now :
<item android:id="#+id/smth1"
android:title="#string/smth1"
android:showAsAction="always"
android:orderInCategory="1" />
I have even tried adding this:
android:uiOptions="splitActionBarWhenNarrow"
into application manifest file, but with no positive result (nothing changed).
I have tried running it on various kind of APIs (14, 16, 17, 19), but with the same result.
If my question seems to be unclear, here is a picture of a menu, which I would like to have:
Thanks for any help.
You need to use the compatibility namespace (see here)
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto">
<item android:id="#+id/menu_add_size"
android:title="#string/menu_add_item"
android:icon="#android:drawable/ic_menu_add"
app:showAsAction="always"/>
</menu>
Once you're using that you can use as many menu buttons as will fit. You're no longer limited to just two buttons + overflow showing.
You maybe just don't have enough space, you should first remove the title from your Activity by adding this to your onCreate method:
ActionBar actionBar = getActionBar();
actionBar.setDisplayShowTitleEnabled(false);
Then you can see here that the maximum number of icons you can display is directly linked to the width of your screen, on small phones you will only be able to see 2 icons in the ActionBar.

Getting the right icons for Action Bar (ActionBarSherlock) and Options Menu with Android Gingerbread

How do you manage Icons with ABS and Gingerbread? As you can see from the Screenshots, I have a menu item "Help", that sits in the action bar, when there's room for it. (when nothing is selected). The icon looks good so far. But when it moves into the options menu, I probably should use another icon for better visibility :)
How do you normally do that? Any ideas? This is my menu xml:
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >
<item
android:id="#+id/new_button"
android:showAsAction="always"
android:title="new"
android:icon="#drawable/content_new_calendar"/>
<item
android:id="#+id/share_button"
android:visible="false"
android:showAsAction="ifRoom"
android:title="share"
android:icon="#drawable/social_share"/>
<item
android:id="#+id/help_button"
android:showAsAction="ifRoom"
android:title="help"
android:icon="#drawable/action_help"/>
</menu>
I know how to create different menus for various api levels, etc. But here, the same phone is showing the icon in the action bar and in the options menu. The simplest solution is to set android:showAsAction="never", but from user reviews I learned, that the App is difficult to understand (especially the Widget-Part), so I would love to have the help menu visible. Any ideas?
P.S. I know that the App is ugly and unfinished. It's work in progress and will be polished :)
Try using the force overflow option like so:
<item name="absForceOverflow">true</item>

How to force overflow menu on android actionbar compat?

Android action bar compat
Is it possible? On older devices (pre 3.0) the items that don't fit the action bar are only shown when the menu key is pressed, I want these items to be grouped in the actionbar's overflow menu.
The action overflow menu is only available when there is no hard menu button available on the device. I found this stated in the Framework Topics under User Interface > Action Bar, check out the 3rd bullet here.
There is an action bar library written by Jake Wharton called ActionBarSherlock. Perhaps this is able to supply you with an action overflow menu style even when on older devices (which include a hard menu button), however I have not looked into this.
Edit: ActionBarSherlock 4.0 (currently a release candidate) has functionality built in to force action overflow. If you want to extend the ActionBarCompat example yourself, you could take a look on github to get an idea how Jake implemented it. I would suggest just looking into using his library all together, as it is very well done.
If you choose to use Jake's library, look into setting up the Activity theme as #style/Theme.Sherlock.ForceOverflow to force the overflow menu on older devices.
Edit2: Using ForceOverflow theme causes issues (example #1) on devices with hardware menu button. Thus, Jake Wharton is going to remove ForceOverflow in the future versions.
Okay, this is simple but hard to figure out.
You first need a menu item you want to use as the overflow inflater. Example
<item
android:id="#+id/a_More"
android:icon="#drawable/more"
android:showAsAction="always"
android:title="More">
</item>
Once you have your item, add a sub-menu containing your items you want in the overflow menu. Example:
<item
android:id="#+id/a_More"
android:icon="#drawable/more"
android:showAsAction="always"
android:title="More">
<menu>
<item
android:id="#+id/aM_Home"
android:icon="#drawable/home"
android:title="Home"/>
</menu>
</item>
On click this will inflate other items within. My application is using ActionBarSherlock 4.0 so before this will work for you, you will need to access the "SplitActionBar". (Will still work on default android Actionbar)
Here's how:
In your AndroidManifest.xml file, you need to add this code under the activity you need the overflow menu in.
Honestly it shouldn't matter if you have the actionbar split or not but I prefer it.
android:uiOptions="splitActionBarWhenNarrow"
NOTE: Your item that inflates your overflow menu MUST showAsAction="always"
Vwola! you have an overflow menu! Hope I helped you out. :)
Following LeviRockerSk8er's suggestion I've forced to have a overflow menu in the action bar like this:
This is the code for "menu.xml":
<item
android:id="#+id/web_clasica"
android:icon="#drawable/ic_action_web_site"
android:showAsAction="ifRoom"
android:title="#string/menu_web"
/>
<item
android:id="#+id/overflow_fijo"
android:icon="#drawable/ic_action_core_overflow"
android:showAsAction="always"
android:title="#string/menu_email"
>
<menu>
<item
android:id="#+id/email"
android:icon="#drawable/ic_action_new_email"
android:showAsAction="ifRoom"
android:title="#string/menu_email"
/>
<item
android:id="#+id/share"
android:icon="#drawable/ic_action_share"
android:showAsAction="ifRoom"
android:title="#string/menu_share"
/>
<item
android:id="#+id/about"
android:showAsAction="ifRoom"
android:icon="#drawable/ic_action_action_about"
android:title="#string/menu_about"/>
</menu>

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