[kizza]

Interesting how they make sure to say that you shouldn't use bottom tabs like in iOS. For my project I decided to do exactly that instead of using an Android standard action bar, because:

1:The bottom bar fits 5 items. An action bar needs to have the app name as well, which means it can't have 5 items anymore. Having a "More" option is just dumb.

2:The iOS bottom bar has text underneath its icons and the action bar doesn't. I'm afraid the icons I have aren't obvious enough without text.

3:This is a conversion from iOS so the images are already made

4:Getting an Android action bar to work on older versions is very difficult. The Android compatibility library doesn't help here, and the third party libraries I looked at were not mature enough. I'm doing this work as part of a fixed price contract so I can't waste days getting it to work reliably.

Bottom line: Android apps would look a lot better if doing things the right way was also the easiest way.

[thetrendycyborg]

you can break out tabs into a separate action bar or use scrollable tabs. You're using elements from another platform your users don't use. You're just going to confuse or annoy them.

[kizza]

For sure, but like I said, I don't have days to spend making half-baked action bar code work.