Question

I’ve got an app that I’ve written targeting Android 2.1 which makes use of the menu button to expose some options. I’d like to have this menu available through the action bar overflow button in ICS, but I’m having trouble with getting it to show up.

If I change my target API to 15, the legacy menu button in the bottom bar disappears in ICS, but the icon in the top right of the action bar doesn’t replace it, so there is no way to access the menu. I’ve tried adding the showAsAction attribute to the menu items, which did nothing. I’m definitely targeting 4.0.3 in my Eclipse build options.

All I want is for that menu to be accessible somewhere whilst using the ICS Holo theme, but still backwards compatible to older devices. How do I go about that?

Answer 1

Usually you add those Action Items simply by implementing the onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) and adding the android:showAsAction="ifRoom" for the desired items in the menu’s XML file.

e.g.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <item android:id="@+id/menu_save"
          android:icon="@drawable/ic_menu_save"
          android:title="@string/menu_save"
          android:showAsAction="ifRoom|withText" />
</menu>

Did you consider this fact?

Edit:
Here is a simple implemantation which worked for me a while ago:

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu){
    super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);
    createMenu(menu);
    return true;
}

private void createMenu(Menu menu){
    MenuItem mnu1 = menu.add(0, 0, 0, "Logout");
    {
        mnu1.setAlphabeticShortcut('a');
        mnu1.setIcon(R.drawable.icon);
        mnu1.setShowAsAction(MenuItem.SHOW_AS_ACTION_IF_ROOM);
    }
}