Google tells Android developers to do away with the menu button...again

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If the disappearance of the menu button on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich hardware wasn't enough of a hint for developers, Google has now flatly said that it suggests that developers stop using the menu button functionality in their apps. Instead, it suggests that they use the ActionBar methodology for additional app functions, as introduced in Android 3.0 Honeycomb and continued in Android 4.0.

Google's goal is to make Android apps more consistent across the board, so that users can easily figure out how to use a new app when they first open it. This is something that Apple has done very well with iOS apps and developers, as many iOS apps use similar control schemes, making the platform consistent and easy to use.

Google addresses the concerns of developers that might think it will be hard to support older devices that have menu buttons and newer devices without them at the same time by saying that only a few lines of code are necessary to enable the ActionBar on newer devices.

Of course, it should be noted that Google needs to make its own native Android apps more consistent before it starts picking on developers, as the apps that come with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich differ quite greatly in how they use the ActionBar system (a prime example of this is the non-Gmail email client). Still, it will be nice to see more consistency across Android apps and hopefully this will help bring them to the level of polish that other platforms' apps have. [Android Developers Blog]