Comment 6 for bug 549643

I've now fixed the animation problem and decided to keep the additional sync menu button for now. It was'nt too difficult to make it work correctly.

About your arguments to keep the menu item:

1. Accessibility
The menu items are also only accessable via touch. There may be a hardware button to launch the menu, but the menu it self is always represended on the display.

2. Follow the guidelines
Me too! Have you seen the recent blog article about the Twitter App: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/05/twitter-for-android-closer-look-at.html ?
Google recommends to use the Action bar for common and often used global actions. See http://code.google.com/intl/de-DE/events/io/2010/sessions/android-ui-design-patterns.html at minute 12:40 for the whole Action bar talking, and note at 14:35: "What are the actions the user should not have to press menu to get at".

About my decision to use a custom notification:

Using the standard progress bar would mean to have some dedicated UI real estade whre it could be placed. I think it's not worth the space plus it would be decupled from the sync button and hence unclear to the user how synchronisation and a orange bar somewhere else in the UI are related.

Status bar notifications are fine and I think we should implement it sometime. Currently we do not have a background service and I think this a essential precondition.