Best practices for avoiding activity chaining and subsequent multpile instances of activities?

Question

I've got the following menu on all 4 of my activities

    @Override
    public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(android.view.MenuItem item)
    {
        // Handle item selection
        switch (item.getItemId())
        {
            case R.id.aboutme:
                android.content.Intent i = new android.content.Intent(this, About.class);
                startActivity(i);
                return true;
            case R.id.help:
//                showHelp();
                return true;
            case R.id.languageselection:
                android.content.Intent i2 = new android.content.Intent(this, com.jameselsey.LanguageSelection.class);
                startActivity(i2);
                return true;
            default:
                return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
        }
    }

This means that from any of my activities I can hit the menu button and go to the About me page, or the Help page etc.

However, each time I do that I'm effectively creating a new instance of that activity and loading it up, as if I keep clicking back I retrace all of the previous activities I've had open.

Are there any resource implications of this? Is there any way that I can navigate away from one activity and kill the one I've moved away from?

Answer 1

You can call finish() on the activity, you're going away from.

Answer 2

You can call finish() after startActivity(i) and it should kill the activity that you are leaving.