Andre Yoskowitz
27 Jan 2012 19:06
Google has hinted at it for months, but it's finally done; the Android hardware "Menu" button is dead and will no longer be needed going forward.
Starting in the next few months, all Google-approved Android devices will launch without a hardware Menu button.
Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich tablet users should be used to soft keys instead of hardware keys, but everyone running Gingerbread (like 98 percent of us) have likely grown accustomed to pressing an actual button.
Replacing the Menu button is the Action Bar, which Google explains is "A window feature at the top of the activity that may display the activity title, navigation modes, and other interactive items." Google has kindly asked all devs to begin using the Action Bar in their coding, saying: "In order to provide the most intuitive and consistent user experience in your apps, you should migrate your designs away from using the Menu button and toward using the action bar. This isn't a new concept - the action bar pattern has been around on Android even before Honeycomb - but as Ice Cream Sandwich rolls out to more devices, it's important that you begin to migrate your designs to the action bar in order to promote a consistent Android user experience."
There you have it. Google wants devs to stop coding using the menu button, in order to give Android users a more consistent experience.