What is the current method of implementing an options menu in an application?

Question

I am relatively new to android development and I'm having a good time so far. My application is functional and I'm ready to add a few options for the user. There seems to be a wealth of information on the ways to do this and I'm having trouble sorting through it and determining which way is the current "accepted" method of providing options to the user.

Does anyone have a great resource to share?

Answer 1

It really depends on the particular app, existing UX, branding and a ton of other design considerations.

In general, starting from scratch, a good starting point (though not universally!) would be the action bar. It gives the user access to ways of manipulating the data on screen, as well as a way of consistently presenting secondary functionality (the overflow menu). Design docs, implementation docs.

I would heartily recommend going through the Patterns section of the design documentation, as it explains the rationale behind many of the core design decisions.

P.S. The reason I'm eager to underline that it's not universal is apps with established UX and user expectations. Examples include Facebook, Path, Google Maps. They all have their reasons for not sticking strictly to the action bar paradigms but they work with it as much as they can.

Answer 2

This Menu Doc page is particularly helpful. But basically if it is API < 11 then you use the hard menu button for an options menu. After 10 the menu items will show in either the ActionBar as action items or in the overflow button. But can still be located in a hard menu button if one exists.

You also always have the option of a contextual menu, primarily with a long click, for things like certain menus depending on the View that is triggered. So maybe show an edit, delete, save menu for a list item.