Using options menus

In this example we shall show you how to create and display option menus in your Android Application. It is very important to use option menus because they enhance the user experience and improve user interaction.

To create Option Menus in Android one should perform the following steps:

• Override the onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) method of the Activity class
• menu.add method to add a menu entry
• Use setIcon method to set an Image for the menu entry

as shown in the code snippet bellow :

private static final int ITEM_VISIT_IMDB = 0;
private static final int ITEM_VIEW_FULL_IMAGE = 1;
...
@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    menu.add(Menu.NONE, ITEM_VISIT_IMDB, 0, 

  getString(R.string.visit_imdb)).setIcon(android.R.drawable.ic_menu_set_as);
    menu.add(Menu.NONE, ITEM_VIEW_FULL_IMAGE, 0, 

  getString(R.string.view_full_image)).setIcon(android.R.drawable.ic_menu_zoom);
    return super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);
}
...
@Override
public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
    switch (item.getItemId()) {

  case ITEM_VISIT_IMDB:

visitImdbMoviePage();

return true;

  case ITEM_VIEW_FULL_IMAGE:

viewFullImagePoster();

return true;
    }
    return false;
}

 
This was an example of how to create Option Menus for your Android Application.

Related Article:

• Android Full App, Part 7: Using options menus and customized dialogs for user interaction