42.6 Menus and the Android Studio Menu Editor
Android Studio allows menus to be designed visually simply by loading the menu resource file into the Menu Editor tool, dragging and dropping menu elements from a palette and setting properties. This considerably eases the menu design process, though it is important to be aware that it is still necessary to write the code in the onOptionsItemSelected() method to implement the menu behavior.
To visually design a menu, locate the menu resource file and double-click on it to load it into the Menu Editor tool. Figure 42-4, for example, shows the default menu resource file for a basic activity loaded into the Menu Editor in Design mode:
The palette (A) contains items that can be added to the menu contained in the design area (C). The Component Tree (B) is a useful tool for identifying the hierarchical structure of the menu. The Attributes panel (D) contains a subset of common attributes for the currently selected item...
