Android App with tabs and menu items - android

I'm trying to implement an application with a specific view. It needs to have a horizontal bar at the top that contains the app icon, and other buttons and spinners. These items must be static and should appear on every page of the app.
Below that horizontal bar will be a Tabbed component, with the tabs being horizontal at the bottom of the page. I can also implement the desired behavior with the tabs on top of the Tabbed component. Each tab will obviously change the fragment being displayed within the tab's frame.
I am working on an implementation that uses the ActionBar and the menu options. However, I can't get the menu options (my buttons and spinners) to appear above the tabs. And I'm not sure if menu options is the right approach. Any ideas?

Silly me! the answer was right there. I simply had to turn the title bar back on (only with no title) and the menu options would appear right into that title bar.

keep in mind that this feature is heavily dependent on the version of android and model of device that you have.
Older phones have a menu button which will bring up the same menu, as do some modern phones (like the galaxy SIII), so, be sure to test this everywhere so you know what the end-user will actually experience.

Related

Trying to make a menu on the bottom without using showasaction

If I don't use show as action=always when creating a menu will it create a menu on the bottom like the old school android phones. I'm trying to create something that has like the facebook mobile tabs on the bottom, and has them for every screen. Or should I actually just make tabs for every screen?
You may be interested in a "split action bar". That way your items could appear at the bottom. showAsAction controls how/if the item appear in the Action Bar.
More information here: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/actionbar.html#SplitBar
If that doesn't look of interest then yes.. you should use tabs (or a view of some sort) at the bottom to render your "menu items".

3 dot/settings in top bar buttons

When in some apps, there are those 3 dots in the top right of the app, on the action bar (not the home buttons), which allow for more options. In my app I have on, but I do not know how to make it do a method when it is clicked. Do I use android:onClick="METHOD_NAME ? Or do I need to setup a button variable in my activity class and setup and onClickListener? I have already tried both but I may be doing something wrong.
That three dots are the menu in the action bar. They are always shown on devices without a menu key.
See also the documentation for more details.
Three dots are called Overflow(very aptly named) and to use them you need to use ActionBar which is the top long, horizontal bar showing icons, other buttons along with the Overflow button.
Now in some devices where there is no physical menu button you will always see Overflow button.
Go through Docs and tutorials related to ActionBar but keep one thing in mind that ActionBar is only available for devices with android above HoneyComb. For android devices below 3.0 such as GingerBread or Froyo you will have to use compatibility libraries, so that will be an additional task.
And most notable libraries for this purpose are ActionBarSherlock and AppCompat.

How do I place the three vertical android dots wherever I want within my app, but will still trigger the menu?

I'm building an android game that doesn't have an action bar. Even though I don't have an action bar, I still want the three vertical dots placed somewhere within my app. I'm not sure if I have to create my own image file that contains the dots, or if there's some way to move the dots in the layout manager in eclipse. Then when these dots are selected I want it to do the vertical drop down menu option like it does in the action bar.
Also I want the dots to disappear in android phones running under android 4.0, so that they can just use the normal menu button. Is this possible? It would be even better if I could get the three dots to trigger the menu in phones below 4.0 but I don't think that's possible so I'd rather just hide it entirely.
Thanks.
I'm not sure if I have to create my own image file that contains the dots
The standard overflow icon should be in your SDK.
or if there's some way to move the dots in the layout manager in eclipse
No.
Then when these dots are selected I want it to do the vertical drop down menu option like it does in the action bar.
You are welcome to implement your own PopupMenu for displaying a menu.
Also I want the dots to disappear in android phones running under android 4.0, so that they can just use the normal menu button
You are welcome to call setVisibility() on whatever you are using for your image whenever the mood strikes you. You will also need to arrange to display your own menu for MENU button presses.
IOW, you will need to roll your own menu system: displaying your trigger, displaying the menu based on the trigger, and doing something on menu choice selections. You are welcome to crib bits of this from the AppCompat action bar in the Android Support package, or perhaps ActionBarSherlock, if you wish.
It would be even better if I could get the three dots to trigger the menu in phones below 4.0
Since you are writing it all yourself, you are welcome to have it do whatever you want.

create app with menu at the bottom (like many iphone apps), how to organize activity / fragments

I want to create a app with a menu at the bottom of the screen. This menu should be visible any time the app is started.
Im working with fragments, so the menu is one fragment.
So I have only one Activity as controller which loads different fragments above the menu fragment.
Because I want to create clean code, i dont know how to solve the problem that the Activity class is too big.
In other words, i want to create different controller within the same activity. How to do that?
Is there another approach to solve this issue?
You should be using the split action bar This allows you to put the Actions and overflow menu on the bottom of the screen. I believe you can use Action Bar Sherlock for backwards compatibility to older versions of Android. See their site for detail.
Another possibility is to look into using fragments with the ViewPager . Here is a library that works with compatability as well ViewPageIndicator . Here is a blog post , like I indicated in my comment I got this working with the tabs showing at the bottom and the pages above.

android action bar with tabs below the screen

For my application , I'm planning to have a design as this:
http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/7045/problemel.png
-Design needs to have a title bar which is indeed the action bar in android. To overcome the compatibility issues, I used the sherlock action bar which is said to support older versions that dont have action bars. I havent tested yet for the older devices however.
-As far as I know, for navigation , we could rather use tabbed or dropdown list methods. I want to have constant tabs for every page in my app to stand below the page. This reflects the tabbed action bar, however I want it below not just under the action bar. I don't know how but youtube application somehow has it in the middle of the screen (if it's not a custom view). So how do we have tabs positioned in the bottom of the page?
-Also I want to have another menu, whose items depend on the page it's on. But the apperance will be the same for every page. In the picture on the left this menu has buttons as "Bt 1" ,"Bt 2". I dont want to repeat the same xml for every activity page, but I'm not sure how to achieve it without repeating. If the action bar allowed using both navigation tabs and the drop down list, I could put the items of this menu in the dropdown list just as the picture on the right (onto the gray button). But I guess it does not?!
Therefore I have to repeat the menu xml code in every page or is there another smart way?
Any advice will be appreciated.
This can be achieved not with tabs but by adding items to a linear_layout with a gravity of bottom but it is a bad practice as #D_Steve595 stated and should be avoided in android designs.
actionBar.setHomeButtonEnabled(false);
actionBar.setNavigationMode(ActionBar.NAVIGATION_MODE_TABS);
actionBar.setDisplayShowTitleEnabled(false);
actionBar.setDisplayShowHomeEnabled(false);

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