Action bar & ActionBarSherlock

Action Bar – AB
&
ActionBarSherlock - ABS

Content
 Action Bar
 General Organization Action Bar
 Split Action Bar
 Contextual Action Bar
 ActionBarSherlock
 Requirements
 Code Snippets
 Summary
 Questions

Action bar
 The action bar is a window feature that identify
the application and user location, and provides
user actions and navigation modes

 Action bar offers users a consistent interface
across application.

 Introduced in API level 11 (Android 3.0
Honeycomb)

Backward Compatibility
 ActionBar class is not available in older versions
of Android (< 3.0).

 Alternate: ActionBarSherlock (ABS) library
helps creating Action bar, back up to android 2.x

 Other option: Action Bar Compatibility (see
sample app in API Demos)

General Organization

1. App Icon
2. View Control
3. Action Buttons
4. Action Overflow

1. App Icon
 Establishes app's identity

 Displays Up caret to the left of the app icon, to
navigate up the hierarchy.

2. View control
 If your app displays data in different views, this
segment of the action bar allows users to switch
views.
i. Drop-down menus
ii. Tab controls
iii. Custom Navigation

 App title or longer branding information can also
use this space.

3. Action Buttons
 Action buttons on the action bar surface your
app's most important activities.

 Actions that don't fit in the action bar are moved
automatically to the action overflow.

Action buttons used throughout the Gmail application

4. Action overflow
 Action overflow provides access to frequently used
actions.
 The overflow icon only appears on phones that
have no menu hardware keys.
 Phones with menu keys display the action overflow
when the user presses the key.

Action overflow is pinned to the right side.

Split Action Bars
 There are three possible locations to split action
bar content.

1. Main action bar
2. Top bar
3. Bottom bar

 Note: Available on Android 4.0 (API level 14) and
higher, for native AB, or use ABS for backward
compatibility

Action bar & ActionBarSherlock

AB on Different Screen Sizes

Gmail App

How many items will fit in the main
action bar?

 Action buttons in the main action bar may not
occupy more than 50% of the bar's width.

 Action buttons on bottom action bars can use the
entire width.

How many actions will fit in the
main action bar?

 Density-independent pixels (dp) determine the
number of items in action bar.

 smaller than 360 dp = 2 icons
 360-499 dp = 3 icons
 500-599 dp = 4 icons
 600 dp and larger = 5 icons

Contextual Action Bar

 A contextual action bar (CAB) is a temporary
action bar.

 It overlays the app's action bar for the duration of
a particular sub-task.

 CABs are most typically used for tasks that
involve acting on selected data or text.

Contextual Action Bar

 Like normal Action Bar, CAB also support split
action bar.

 ActionMode represents a contextual mode (or
CAB) of the user interface.

 Dismiss the CAB via
i. Navigation bar's Back button
ii. CAB's checkmark button

ActionBarSherlock (ABS)

 ActionBarSherlock is a standalone library.

 It allows developer to develop apps with action
bar on Android API level 2.x and up.

 Current version: 4.2.0 — 08-10-2012

 Developed by : Jake Wharton

ActionBarSherlock (ABS)

 The library will automatically use native Action
Bar implementation on Android 4.0 or above.

 On Android 3.x (Honeycomb), app will prefer ABS
over native Action Bar.

ABS Requirements

 It is required that both ABS library and your
project are compiled with Android 4.0 or newer.

 It is also required that you are compiling with JDK
1.6 in both, your editor and build systems.

ABS Theme Requirements
 The ABS library provides three core themes.

 Theme.Sherlock
 Theme.Sherlock.Light
 Theme.Sherlock.Light.DarkActionBar

 One of above theme is must for all activities
having action bar.

 Custom Theme

Native AB VS ABS
Native AB classes ABS library classes

 Activity  SherlockActivity
 FragmentActivity  SherlockFragmentActivity
 Fragment  SherlockFragment
 ListFragment  SherlockListFragment
 ListActivity  SherlockListActivity
 DialogFragment  SherlockDialogFragment

ABS Common Imports
 Ensure that you are using these types where
appropriate

 com.actionbarsherlock.app.ActionBar
 com.actionbarsherlock.view.Menu
 com.actionbarsherlock.view.MenuItem
 com.actionbarsherlock.view.MenuInflater

Note: ABS contain same classes that are named
same as their native counterparts

ABS and Proguard

 Add the following lines in proguard.cfg, to ensure
proper functionality of the library:

-keep class android.support.v4.app.** { *; }
-keep interface android.support.v4.app.** { *; }
-keep class com.actionbarsherlock.** { *; }
-keep interface com.actionbarsherlock.** { *; }
-keep attributes *Annotation*

Action Bar – Menu xml
 Create XML file in /res/menu/my_menu

Split Action Bar

 Update AndroidManifest.xml

What else ?
 Action Providers i.e.  Search
 Settings
 Share Action Provider  Overlay

 Navigation Mode  Static Attachment
 No need to extend
 Progress SherlockActivity etc
 Indeterminate Progress  Implement
 Horizontal Progress Bar OnCreateOptionsMenuListe
ner

Summary

 Native Action bar - Introduced in Android API 11
(Android 3.0 Honeycomb)
 ActionBarSherlock support API 2.x and above.
 ABS library will automatically use native Action
Bar implementation on Android 4.0 or above.
 Be careful while importing classes, ABS have
same class names as native AB.
 Split Action bar
 Contextual Action bar

Action bar & ActionBarSherlock

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