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I can't tell if they're the same thing or not and they seem to have different methods for removing them but I'm not sure if those are just multiple methods to do the same thing or not.

So is there a difference and if there is what is it?

Ref:

Gabor
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user2312638
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2 Answers2

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The Title bar is a small part of the UI that you can supply with some text and a color. You see it on a lot of Android 2.0 Apps. See here

The Actionbar is the bar with buttons that has back navigation etc. If you can chose, you use it instead of the Titlebar. See here

meredrica
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3

Different thing.

TitleBar - small (usually grey) strip at top of screen that lists your Application Name (mostly not used anywhere)

ActionBar - the core navigation component of modern Android apps - this is where you will put the main navigation components (including actions on the things in your activity, a title explaining where you are in the app, Share links, etc); To support this in all modern Android versions, you will need to use a library to implement this. ActionBarSherlock is a very popular one, and there is now ActionBarCompat, which was released in the latest Support Library.

Bottom line, TitleBar should be disabled in favor of ActionBar for applications targeting modern design standards

Booger
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  • TitleBar *is* used quite a bit by apps that target Android versions prior to Honeycomb (api 11), which is when ActionBar was introduced. ActionBar is far from being the core navigation component of "all" android apps, but it's the suggested UI pattern -- and even Google deviates from that. `ActionBarSherlock` is only required if targeting versions prior to api 11. – 323go Oct 09 '13 at 18:19
  • Yeah, I do appreciate that legacy apps still use TitleBar, but I think most modern design uses ActionBar. I was just suggesting ABS as a good source tons of info (more than legacy Android API for sure). ActionBar is a core design pattern and should be used (of course not ALL apps implement it, ALL of anything is false). – Booger Oct 09 '13 at 19:00