Credit: Ashaduzzaman Rubel

1. Using Action Bar

2. Action Bar
• The action bar is a window feature that identifies the
application and user location, and provides user actions and
navigation modes.
• You should use the action bar in most activities that need to
prominently present user actions or global navigation.
• You can control the behaviors and visibility of the action bar
with the ActionBar APIs, which were added in Android 3.0 (API
level 11).
• To use ActionBar in previous Android versions there is a Library
‘ActionBarSherlock’ which can be downloaded from
http://actionbarsherlock.com/
• ActionBarSherlock supports from Android 2.0 and over.

3. Using ActionBarSherlock(ABS)
• To use ABS it has to be
imported in eclipse and
has to be an opened
project.
• Create a new Android
project in Eclipse.
• In create project
window select ‘Create
project from existing
source’
• In the location browse
to the ‘library folder’ in
ABS library which was
downloaded.

4. Using ActionBarSherlock(ABS)
• Go to the build path
window of action bar
project.
• Under Libraries tab add
jar ‘android-support-
v4.jar’ which is already
included in the libs
folder.
• Also set the build
target to API 14 or
higher.
• Though ABS will be
used with 2.0 or above
it requires to be built
with 4.0 or higher

5. Using ActionBarSherlock(ABS)
• Now create a new
project in Eclipse
with minimum SDK
7 and set Build
target to 15.

6. Using ActionBarSherlock(ABS)
• Go to the project properties
again and in the library
section add the Previous
created ‘ActionBarSherlock’
library
• Since the action bar widget is
very complex it requires a set
of default themes. The
library provides three core
themes—one of
which must be applied to
each activity on which you
want the action bar present.
• In the Manifest set theme in
the appication tag for all
activities or or under specific
Activities
• ‘android:theme="@style/Theme.S
herlock">’

7. • Now we are ready to integrate
Action Bar.
• To Enable Action Bar for any
activity, the Activity must
extend ‘SherlockActivity’
instead of ‘Activity’
• To access ActionBar use
getSupportActionBar() instead
of getActionBar().

8. Adding Menu in ActionBar
• To add menu in ActionBar use menu like
optionsMenu.
• Define in the XML but Add the tag
‘showAsAction’ and set it to ‘ifRoom’

9. • Now in the Activity’s onCreateOptionsMenu() use
getSupportMenuInflater() to get the menu inflater and inflate the XML
menu file
• In the
onOptionsItemSelect
ed() do the necessary
jobs identified menu
items by ‘id‘ set in
the XML file

10. • Here is the result