Android Question action bar with forced overflow button?

[Dave O]

Hi all,

Is there an actionBar that lets me show the overflow-menu button always? (i.e. even on devices that have a hardware menu button)

Background:
In my apps so far, I've built a top action bar (icon, title, icon buttons) manually, but I'd like to use a real actionBar component so that it auto-configures itself for different screen sizes (e.g. showing more buttons on tablets or in landscape mode, moving buttons to the overflow menu for phones or portrait mode).

I've tried various actionBar libraries, and they all seem to suffer from the same "problem": if the device has a hardware menu button (typical on older devices like my Note 3), the overflow button is not shown. While this follows the Android design guidelines, it's a usability fail, because the overflow menu is much harder to discover. I want the overflow button to always be visible if there are overflow items, regardless of the hardware menu button.

Any suggestions appreciated!

 

[Erel]

Use a custom button and call Activity.OpenMenu.
You can detect whether the device has a physical button or not with this code: https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/posts/268871/

 

[Dave O]

> Use a custom button and call Activity.OpenMenu

Sorry @Erel , do you mean "use a custom button" in an action bar, or without the action bar?

 

[Erel]

Depends on your requirements. You can add a regular menu button with Activity.AddMenuItem3.