Android Question Action Bars... Need Help Parsing them out!

[Shadow&Max]

I've looked at all the action bar libraries I think... at least the descriptions of them. I know I can trap the android version from the phone. Is there any way to handle, cleanly, action bars that will work with all versions of android?

Or, can I trap the version, and then decide upon the implementation of which action bar lib I need to use at runtime?

There's no question that having the action bar buttons on top make a huge amount of sense, and it frees up some space I can use, plus allows people to make decisions on saving things even when the keyboard is showing, so I'd like to use them.

But, at the same time, according to stats I looked at in the past few days, Android versions 2x are still one of the biggest segments of the android population.

Anyone know the best way to handle this and cover all bases???

 

[Erel]

Versions distribution: http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

Android 4+ share is about 80%.

What do you want to do with the action bar? If all you want to do is add buttons then you don't need to use any library. Just call Activity.AddMenuItem3. It will show as menu items in older devices.

 

[Shadow&Max]

Thanks Erel... This is perfect... I was looking at the wrong list, but even 20% is pretty big. Still, the MenuItem3 will work just fine...

Thank you again...

 

[LucaMs]

Moreover, menu items do not take up space!

But they are ugly and probably the user tries before the options on the display, because the "button" of the menu is not always well visible.

I will be using the menu items for two contextual functions, Help and Preferences, buttons arranged to my liking for all other actions.

 

[Informatix]

Is there any way to handle, cleanly, action bars that will work with all versions of android?

I made my ActionBar class to be sure to get the same look & feel whatever the Android version is used. It's basically a panel with buttons.

 

[Shadow&Max]

Is there a way to change the icons, enable and disable action bar icons on the fly??? And menus for that matter...

 

[Informatix]

Is there a way to change the icons, enable and disable action bar icons on the fly??? And menus for that matter...

An action bar where you cannot change anything would be stupid and useless, don't you think?
This is a class, so you can rewrite or add the code to fit your needs. Currently, there's no menu support because there are plenty of existing libraries for a contextual menu. It's just an action bar: a panel with buttons (or other views if you don't like buttons).

 

[Shadow&Max]

Got it... thanks!