What is the difference between Option Menu and Panel Menu in Android?

Question

I just created a Panel Menu by mistake with the auto-completion of Eclipse and did not realise it before I read my code. As I wanted to have an option menu, I didn't see the slight difference in the display so does anyone know what the difference(s) is/are between these 2 menus? Is there any advantage or drawback for using one or the other? The only difference I saw was (I didn't go into details though):

public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu)

or

public boolean onCreatePanelMenu(int featureId, Menu menu)

thanks (Shouldn't this be a bounty?)

Chinese

Answer 1

onCreatePanelMenu is called after you call addSubMenu from the Menu class. Seems like a rather arcane and badly documented feature. Here is a reference from the Beginning Android 2 book.

Selflove

Answer 2

Well Sephy

The main difference between options menu an context menu that context menu pops up relatively to a option menu. It only pops up when particular menu option is pressed and not remains in the memory after it is dismissed.

Ukulele

You got me confused... You are speaking of context menu but in a way that does not looks like their common use... – Chinese

@Ukulele Sephy is talking about Options and Panel Menus which are different from Context Menus. 3 different things. – Damnedest