Handling the missing MENU button in new versions of Android (3.x and up)

Let me share another scenario where Menu Button becomes critical even though it is not a game.

I have app implement its own tool bars which behave to some extent like ActionBar. Well I did that coz my app was released with 1.5 sdk. At that time there is no such concept. And to accomodate for my toolbars i hide the default title bar. But some of the actions are done through Menu functionality.

Now since in Galaxy Nexus there is no Menu button if you are not using ActionBar and that is hurting me because my app still supports 1.5.

Well there are various work arounds, but none is easy.

That said, the only work around I come up with is to give user all options on my toolbar, so there is no need for Menu at all. I can do this because i only have two actions which are not part of the toolbar.

In your situation, context menu on a button is not a bad soln in a game as game will have only one context in which it is running as compared to having context menu on list items where every item is a different context.

BTW if openOptionsMenu works on ICS and you can ditch HoneyComb after a while (even now the userbase is too low) then try giving both menus based on the version.

EDIT: Well there is another way also to get the MENU s/w button in the below navigation bar. Just set the targetSdkVersion to less than 11. For more details pls read the whole soln.

However, ICS makes this a serious issue, since the MENU button is obviously not coming back.

More accurately, it is up to device manufacturers whether to have off-screen buttons or not for things like MENU. Quoting the Compatibility Definition Document for Android 4.0:

The Home, Menu and Back functions are essential to the Android navigation paradigm. Device implementations MUST make these functions available to the user at all times when running applications. These functions MAY be implemented via dedicated physical buttons (such as mechanical or capacitive touch buttons), or MAY be implemented using dedicated software keys, gestures, touch panel, etc.

So, you cannot count on there being an off-screen MENU button, though there may well be one.

Any thoughts on how to deal with this?

Write your own "menu" as part of your game UI. I would not expect a game that thinks it needs the full screen to use the options menu -- in fact, I can't remember ever seeing a game that did that (though, admittedly, I am not a big-time game player). All the games that I have played do nothing on a MENU press. Rather, anything that might be considered a "menu" is implemented directly in the game UI (e.g., a button that leads to a screen, formatted in the game UI's look-and-feel, that offers choices for things to do).

Drop the Options Menu entirely, and go over to only using Context Menus?

That would be awful, as users will not know where to long-press to bring up the menu.

And just to put the last spike in the proverbial coffin of the menu button, Google weighs in with a final goodbye:

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2012/01/say-goodbye-to-menu-button.html