Question

Now that TabActivity is deprecated, what is the proper way to build a tabbed interface using fragments? Every tutorial I have seen takes a different approach. Some of them are supremely complicated pushing a mundane programming topic to the rocket science territory. What gives?

I am coding for ICS Android 4.0.

Thanks.

Answer 1

The preferred way now is to use the tabs that ActionBar gives you. It’s quite easy to set up, given that you like this option. With ActionbarSherlock, you can even port your app all the way back to 1.6.

It’s not suitable for every case however. For example, you might need those tabs to be inside a fragment, on a screen that displays multiple fragments at once. In that case, you have to stick with the “deprecated” methods to set up the tabs, using a TabWidget. It’s ugly, but possible.

Edit:

Check Jeff’s comment. As he pointed out, I was wrong, TabWidget is still perfectly valid, TabAvtivity is the deprecated class here!