Question

Is there a way to use ActionBar tabs, but with the tabs switching ContentViews instead of fragments? The issue is that I have dual-pane layouts on large screens that have a fragment in each of two panes and I’d want to switch out the whole container view when that tab is selected.

Currently I’m using my own tabbing mechanism, but I’d like to integrate better into the built-in features and behavior of the ActionBar, and to save space by not having to have a separate ActionBar and tab bar when possible.

Answer 1

From the Action Bar docs —

To get started, your layout must include a ViewGroup in which you
place each Fragment associated with a tab. Be sure the ViewGroup has a
resource ID so you can reference it from your tab-swapping code.
Alternatively, if the tab content will fill the activity layout
(excluding the action bar), then your activity doesn’t need a layout
at all (you don’t even need to call setContentView()). Instead, you
can place each fragment in the default root ViewGroup, which you can
refer to with the android.R.id.content ID (you can see this ID used in
the sample code below, during fragment transactions).

If you specify a layout for your activity with slots for two fragments, you can replace them both (or even just one if that makes sense your app) in the ActionBar.TabListener callback. The callback still leaves you in control of the layout.