title: Android equivalent of top level menu
body: <p>Desktop apps have top level menus (File, Edit, Search, ..., Help).</p>
  
  <p>Web apps have very similar thing, menu tabs (Logo, Questions, Tags, Users, Badges, ...).</p>
  
  <p>However I cannot find equivalent of top level menu in Android framework. Assume that my app has 5 main activities. According to <a href="http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/menu_design.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">menu design guidelines</a> options menu should contain actions related to current activity. So how an app should allow users to easily switch to one of five main activities.</p>
  
  <p>It seems that different apps solve the problem in different ways. Some have a tab list at the top of the screen, some at the bottom. Even Google applications aren't consisted in that field. Google Listen has an options menu item called 'Listen Home', however Listen main activity has no that options menu item. Others have two icons in app luncher which start two different activities from one app.</p>
  
  <p>I realize that due to small phone screens Android apps have to be designed in a slightly different way than web or desktop apps. But I have a feeling that the app top level menu topic was omitted in Android framework. And developers are on their own here. Or am I missing something?</p>
  
  <p>Update: this is Google blueprint for a great app</p>
  
  <p>Update2: this <a href="http://code.google.com/p/iosched/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">an example app</a> of these patterns </p>
  
  <p>Update3: <a href="https://github.com/cyrilmottier/GreenDroid" rel="nofollow noreferrer">GreenDroid</a> library helps a lot implementing these patters in your apps. It seems that dashboard and action bar patterns are becoming quite popular. </p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/qZGw2.jpg" alt="alt text"></p>