Is there a standard way to add dividers between action bar items in Android 3.0?

Question

I have a slight problem trying to customise the look of the action bar in my app. I want to be able to have the pixel wide dividers to group action bar items that you see in

Answer 1

I wouldn't try and force dividers into places that the system does not add them automatically as it will make your app inconsistent with the platform. The default behavior is:

• Divider between overflow and others.
• Divider between text and another item where it would disambiguate which item the text belongs to.

Answer 2

I couldn't find a standard way, but the way I did it was to use the android:actionLayout property for the menu item, and I put the divider in there.

Answer 3

When Google released the 3.0 SDK I got a quick demo app to see how the ActionBar works and just looking back at it, if I use Text Items without Icon drawables, then I get automatic dividers drawn.

My menu.xml file is like this:

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
  <item android:id="@+id/menu_text" android:showAsAction="ifRoom" android:title="@string/action_label_text" />
  <item android:id="@+id/menu_text" android:showAsAction="ifRoom" android:title="@string/action_label_text" />
  <item android:id="@+id/menu_text" android:showAsAction="ifRoom" android:title="@string/action_label_text" />
  <item android:id="@+id/menu_text" android:showAsAction="ifRoom" android:title="@string/action_label_text" />
</menu>

Maybe this won't work with icons??

Or thinking about it, maybe the size of the icon has an effect?