Question

I implemented ActionBarCompat to have an ActionBar across different OS versions.
It is hidden on smartphones, and displayed only on tablets.

I see that in this screenshot: http://developer.android.com/resources/samples/ActionBarCompat/index.html, the Share option menu displays the Logout option in a submenu, but when I compiled and run the sample code on a tablet, the Logout option was completely hidden and there wasn’t any option to display it as a submenu

Then I tried to do something like this:

<item        
    android:icon="@android:drawable/ic_menu_delete"
    android:orderInCategory="1"
    android:showAsAction="always"
    android:title="@string/menu_logout">
    <menu>
        <item
            android:id="@+id/menu_logout"                                
            android:title="@string/menu_logout"/>
    </menu>
</item>

And it really looks how I want – on a tablet, on a smartphone however, it has an undesired effect – when clicking the Logout option menu, it displays another context menu, which is because of nested menus I believe.

Do you know guys, how can I display a submenu when using the Action Bar on a tablet, and display just a regular option menu on smartphone? Maybe ActionBarCompat requires some additional configuration?

Answer 1

I found a solution.
The solution consists of having 2 separate menu resources files, for tablets and for smartphones: menu_tablet.xml, menu_smartphone.

For tablets, I display a submenu:

<item        
    android:icon="@android:drawable/ic_menu_delete"
    android:orderInCategory="1"
    android:showAsAction="always"
    android:title="@string/menu_logout">
    <menu>
        <item
            android:id="@+id/menu_logout"                                
            android:title="@string/menu_logout"/>
    </menu>
</item>

For smartphones I display as a regular option menu:

<item        
        android:icon="@android:drawable/ic_menu_delete"
        android:orderInCategory="1"
        android:showAsAction="always"
        android:id="@+id/menu_logout"                                
        android:title="@string/menu_logout"    />

And then in the code I inflate the appropriate menu resource like this:

if(isTablet()){
    menuInflater.inflate(R.menu.menu_tablet, menu);
}else{
    menuInflater.inflate(R.menu.menu_smartphone, menu);
}