I started working with NavigationDrawer using ActionBarSherlock and got good results, but my company approving this Open Source is not likely to come anytime soon, so I'm working to switch to ActionBarCompat.
ActionBarCompat was just officially released yesterday (July 24th, 2013). Has anyone gotten both to work well with each other? I'm hoping I can answer my own question, but seeing if anyone has gotten this to work. The race is on! :-)
YouTube on ActionBarCompat's release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TGgYqfJnyc
UPDATE (working code, yes!): I've gotten the sample NavigationDrawer app from Google converted to use ActionBarCompat and it is working fine. You can find it here as a reference or start to your project: https://github.com/bcrider/NavigationDrawerActionBarCompat
The 2.x version looks even better than the way it did with ActionBarSherlock, but I'll have to work with ActionBarCompat a lot more to see if I like it better.
NOTE: I'm too new to add more than one link in a post, etc., so am answering my own question instead of editing it (hope that's not against the rules?). Will edit the original once allowed.
Simple way to add Navigation Drawer with ActionBarCompat: I found that converting my existing app wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Google's sample led me to believe Fragments were a necessity but that wasn't the case... far from it.
You can simply wrap your existing layouts with the DrawerLayout and plug in the ListView (or any layout containing the ListView for that matter) for the actual navigation. Then add the normal code to your existing Activity (extend ActionBarActivity) and build the navigation as you would have to anyway.
Here's some sample code with which to wrap your existing layout:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<android.support.v4.widget.DrawerLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="@+id/drawer_layout"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent" >
[YOUR EXISTING LAYOUT GOES HERE]
<ListView
android:id="@+id/left_drawer"
android:layout_width="300dp"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:layout_gravity="start"
android:background="#111"
android:choiceMode="singleChoice"
android:divider="@android:color/transparent"
android:dividerHeight="0dp" />
</android.support.v4.widget.DrawerLayout>
If you want to start with a sample app that does use fragments and go from there, here's my github repository based on the sample code: https://github.com/bcrider/NavigationDrawerActionBarCompat