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What is the difference between the toolbar and the action bar? The most obvious difference between the two is the updated visual design of the toolbar. The toolbar no longer includes an icon on the left side and decreases some of the spacing between the action items on the right side.
An on-screen toolbar displaying icons that are clicked or tapped to perform various functions. For example, the menu bar at the top of an Android app is called an action bar.
The main purpose of Toolbar is to display its children with an inline display (elements are placed next to each other), something Appbar doesn't do. The AppBar component uses display: flex and flex-direction: column, that means direct descendants are stacked on top of each other.
if you are using custom toolbar or ActionBar and you want to get reference of your toolbar/action bar from Fragments then you need to first get instance of your Main Activity from Fragment's onCreateView Method like below. ImageView vRightBtn = activity. toolbar.
I found a good explanation from Android Developers Blog post.
In this release, Android introduces a new Toolbar widget. This is a generalization of the Action Bar pattern that gives you much more control and flexibility. Toolbar is a view in your hierarchy just like any other, making it easier to interleave with the rest of your views, animate it, and react to scroll events. You can also set it as your Activity’s action bar, meaning that your standard options menu actions will be display within it.
Yes, we, Android developers, needed more control over ActionBar, right? And Toolbar is just for it.
In other words, the ActionBar now became a special kind of Toolbar. This is an excerpt from Google's official Material Design spec document.
The app bar, formerly known as the action bar in Android, is a special kind of toolbar that’s used for branding, navigation, search, and actions.
More details like how to use Toolbar as an ActionBar are included in above blog post.
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