Google has belted out certain instructions to developers of the Android 4.0 OS, which state that they should employ the ActionBar in lieu of the standard menu button. The company has been taking the Ice Cream Sandwich platform quite seriously, intending to make it a sleeker mobile OS, as illustrated by this move and the recent launch of the Android Design website. The latter was set up to guide app developers in designing attractive and useful applications.
According to the official Android Developers blog, all Android platforms which came before the Honeycomb OS used a dedicated menu button. However, along with the introduction of Android 3.0, the ActionBar made its debut and this had been developed to replace the menu tab. The company aims to eliminate the menu button as it wants to make the user interface crisper, cleaner and more consistent. An ActionBar basically contains various user options, tools and apps which let device owners gain access to them in an easier and faster way.
As for developers who feel that the older versions of the Android OS may not support the ActionBar technology, the blog has revealed that merely a few more lines of code are required to activate it on most devices. Through this statement, Google encourages developers to stop thinking of creating interfaces with the menu button and actively work on integrating the ActionBar option instead.
The Android Developers blog has illustrated in detail, the different ways in which Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS interface developers can incorporate the ActionBar.