I'm fairly new to android development, but am I long time android user. Phones used to have a "hardware" menu button, which I have since seen is emulated in software, but only when I'm running an 'old' app on my phone ("three dots stacked on top of each other that appears to the right of all the other buttons)
Why is writing apps that make use of the button discouraged?
Is it not supported by most phones?
Is it a bad user experience? ('swipe down from top to access soft buttons', etc..)
Answer
Because it's less congnitive effort to press an icon that is somewhere in your vision (on the screen), than remembering that the option is hidden under the menu button.From the design perspective, you want as less options hidden in some menu somewhere, and more options that are more intuitively-placed.
Android 4.0 introduced multitasking button to its navigation, so, if the menu button was kept there, there would be four navigation buttons, and that would be confusing. Menu button was replaced by options in the Action Bar, and Action Overflow button (shown below).
Basically every manufacturer switched to multitask button instead of menu button (even Samsung, who lingered with the menu button for a while), so you could say that, now, in 2015, phones with this legacy button are becoming more scarce, so the development of the software that takes advantage of the legacy button is discouraged.
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