Creating Android Facebook-like menu on bottom bar - android

I'm using Galaxy tab and it's got a bar on bottom that appears all the time.
FB app shows a new item there that used as a menu button.
How can I declare my menu to be there like FB?
Thanks!

I guess they are still using the old options menu. You can achieve that effect by setting the target sdk to max 10. I wouldn't recommend that as the menu button hides information and is not the current way to go (I'd use an ActionBar)

You should definately look at the ActionBar. In addition to the tab navigation that is available, you have an option for a split action bar for top and bottom. ActionBar is part of Honeycomb (3.x), but if you want to support older versions, there is the ActionBarSherlock library.

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Moving a view left of the screen

My android app UI have two parts- a menu bar (blue color) and content area (gray color).
Here red is the device screen.
The menu bar should open from left to right whene the hamburger menu is clicked.
I tried with ViewSwitcher but that shows only one view at a time.
What is the right method to implement it?
UPDATE: I am looking for the solution for API level 10 onwards.
In the newest version of the ADT you can select Navigation Drawer as navigation type when you create a new Activity. This automatically implements this type of navigation for you.
Alternatively, check out this tutorial: http://developer.android.com/training/implementing-navigation/nav-drawer.html
If you are happy with the navigation bar overlaying the content, then use the navigation drawer as suggested.
Alternatively check out:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.desarrollodroide.repos
There are many open source libraries that you can pick and test, and then decide which one to grab the code for.

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.

Android tab layout issue

I'm having a bit of a problem with the Android tab layout. I've been trying to make a screen that holds 4 tabs, and a fragment beneath them, when a user presses each tab the fragment dynamically switches to another activity and the tabs stay static, my problem is that I tried to implement it with tab layout and it's deprecated in since Android 4.0, so I tried it with the action bar tabs but then I have the action bar that I don't want nor need.
I have two questions:
Is it possible to use action bar but to hide the action bar and show only the tabs?
Is there a way to use tab layout on Android 4.0 and higher versions?
1.Yes there is possibility.....you should try http://actionbarsherlock.com/
2.ActionBarSherlock works from sdk 7 to sdk 16
I am not really sure about whether you can achieve it or not but if you want to play around with the ActionBar, this would be one of the best places to start.
Just because it is deprecated, doesn't mean that you can't use tabs in Android 4+. ;)
You surely can use Tabs and TabLayout in Android 4+ and everything works perfectly(though you apparently should not as ActionBar is a must better option).
I have tried it myself because even I prefer the TabLayout more than the ActionBar, and thankfully haven't run into any issues until now!
The only thing you will notice is that Eclipse will draw a yellow line over the deprecated code (which you can obviously ignore or just choose to hide all deprecated warnings).

Whether options menu at the bottom in Android can be made permanent?

Whether options menu at the bottom (Inflated menu) can be made permanent? The menu should be permanently inflated without the need for user to press the menu button?
whether it can be done?
whether it can be done?
No.
Besides, that menu is going away. Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich are moving to the action bar pattern, where the options menu is integrated into the action bar as a drop-down menu and optional toolbar buttons.
If you want to give the user some always-visible set of actions, consider adding the action bar to your own applications. You can do this on pre-Honeycomb devices using third-party action bar implementations like ActionBarSherlock.
You can wrap your layout in a relativelayout and add buttons to the bottom. You can have it look similar too.
As Bill said you can add buttons in Relative layout and not create menu...if you need some code just tell me...
In which version you want the solution ,
in tab versions and 4.0 you can solve this problem as follows.
in manifest file add this attibute to application Tag android:uiOptions="splitActionBarWhenNarrow" so that your actionbar shows in the bottom. while your mobile is in portrait , in landscape it shows as usual on the top
and them add this flag to your menu item
MenuItem.SHOW_AS_ACTION_ALWAYS
check this link for more flags http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/MenuItem.html i hope this will solve the issue

Customized navigation menu in Android

I'd like to create a navigation menu in my Android app: a bar always at the bottom of the screen, with 4 choices Home|Categories|Search|Favorites, and the current page highlighted.
It seems the options menu can hardly be customized, so I can't use it.
Do I have to add this navigation bar in every layout or is there any better solutions?
Thanks
Julien
It sounds like you're replicating an iPhone interface. As most Android phones have buttons along the bottom of the screen (Home, Back, etc) it's likely to be a bad idea to put navigation there as it's easy to hit the wrong one.
The Google-recommended approach is to use the Action Bar pattern, across the top of the screen, which is very clear, and means your app is consistent with others (look at Twitter, Google Maps, Facebook - they all use the action bar pattern).
From Honeycomb (v3.0) onwards:
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/ActionBar.html
A simple library to create an Action Bar on any version of Android
https://github.com/johannilsson/android-actionbar
To create an action bar that uses that library on versions earlier than 3.0, but uses the official implemention for v3.0+, try this:
https://github.com/JakeWharton/ActionBarSherlock
The action bar is highly customisable, but remember that a key to a nice user interface is consistency across the platform, i.e. your app consistent with other apps and the OS.
If you need a navigation with more items or items within a specific page, you can use TabLayout, but for your primary nav, use the action bar, that's what it's for.
Use the TabLayout

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