Handling the missing MENU button in new versions of Android (3.x and up)

Question

I\'m a fan of the menu button as used in Android <3.0, as it was very useful for my game apps - it allowed me to take important but gameplay irrelevant functionality (sav

Answer 1

However, ICS makes this a serious issue, since the MENU button is obviously not coming back.

More accurately, it is up to device manufacturers whether to have off-screen buttons or not for things like MENU. Quoting the Compatibility Definition Document for Android 4.0:

The Home, Menu and Back functions are essential to the Android navigation paradigm. Device implementations MUST make these functions available to the user at all times when running applications. These functions MAY be implemented via dedicated physical buttons (such as mechanical or capacitive touch buttons), or MAY be implemented using dedicated software keys, gestures, touch panel, etc.

So, you cannot count on there being an off-screen MENU button, though there may well be one.

Any thoughts on how to deal with this?

Write your own "menu" as part of your game UI. I would not expect a game that thinks it needs the full screen to use the options menu -- in fact, I can't remember ever seeing a game that did that (though, admittedly, I am not a big-time game player). All the games that I have played do nothing on a MENU press. Rather, anything that might be considered a "menu" is implemented directly in the game UI (e.g., a button that leads to a screen, formatted in the game UI's look-and-feel, that offers choices for things to do).

Drop the Options Menu entirely, and go over to only using Context Menus?

That would be awful, as users will not know where to long-press to bring up the menu.