I have been going though the android tutorial on the developer site, and have run while trying to add actions to the Action bar (I am using the Support Library to support ve
If your actionbar buttons aren't displaying properly when using Appcompat its possible that you're not using the right schema to configure your buttons.
If you're using Appcompat you need to use the schema as shown below on the "yourapp" fields for the API11+ settings such as showAsAction and actionLayout.
source: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/actionbar.html