Just a little example of extracting some of the ghoulishness of doing find view by ID and then casting to a specific type. I prefer this because then the type is already cast and you don't have to provide the generic type in the argument like GetViewById<T> because it's inferred.

BaseActivity.java

package com.example.test1;

import android.app.Activity;

public class BaseActivity extends Activity {

    protected <T> T GetViewById(int id) {
        return (T)findViewById(id);
    }

}

MainActivity.java

package com.example.test1;

import android.os.Bundle;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.view.Menu;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class MainActivity extends BaseActivity {

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
        // Inflate the menu; this adds items to the action bar if it is present.
        getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.main, menu);

        // Example of using the new tidy way of getting view
        TextView name = GetViewById(R.id.lblImportant);

        return true;
    }
}