Multiple tabhosts or buttons

Question

I'm currently developing app for one shop and as the design came together I stumbled upon a problem. There is one main activity which has five tabs on top and also in one of those top tabs there are two tabs on the bottom to switch between activities in that main(top) tab. As I started to develop UI I put another tab host at the bottom (bad idea, because it somehow corrupts design of top tabs(top tab background is streched)).

So the question is What would be the best way to make 3 activities fit and work in one tab? Should I use buttons or another tabhost or some other widget?

Answer 1

Probably best for this type of app would be a fly-out menu instead of the first-level tabs on the top: http://www.androiduipatterns.com/2012/06/emerging-ui-pattern-side-navigation.html

Google+, and Facebook are two examples of apps that use this pattern.

Inside this menu you could either use something hierarchical or you could still use a tab for the second level - but please use those tabs in conjunction with an ActionBar.

Please read Cyril Mottiers post about how to point out that this menu exists to your users: http://android.cyrilmottier.com/?p=658

There are even libraries out there to help you with this kind of menu. Juhani Lehtimaeki has links to them in his post (the first one above) as well.