Building the Menu of your Mobile Application

There are many different approaches you can choose from when building your mobile application menu. Below is a summary of key app menu styles used in applications today. 

Toolbar Only Navigation

• Commonly used for single screen apps
• Can be used with tab control for multi-screen navigation
• Consists of text or glyph buttons
• Bordered/Non-bordered icons or text buttons 

Tab Bar Navigation

• Used to divide app into key focus areas
• Provides intuitive user experience
• Often used in conjunction with header toolbar 
• Displayed with annotated glyphs (iOS), no glyphs (Android)

App Home Screen Navigation

• Glyph Buttons arranged in a grid like layout
• Glyph Buttons can be annotated with text
• May span over multiple screens 

Drawer Menu

• Main app menu is hidden by default
• Invoked by tapping on a menu button or swiping left/right
• Allows you to take advantage of more screen real estate when building your application 

In a follow-on tutorial, I will cover how you can create your own Drawer menu using Appmethod.