Live data from Hacker News

Material You – The next stage for Material Design

material.io

51–60 of 155 posts

Re: Material You – The next stage for Material Design

#53

Seems like this will be an unpopular opinion, but I like the design. How appealing a design is is personal preference, and I think a lot of the elements advertised, say, squiggly sliders, show the flexibility of the system; it's not like all sliders will be squiggly, but it opens up the possibility while still working with the rest of the design language. The emphasis on customization is important as well - a more fl…

I suspect a nonzero amount of hate online is coming from iOS users, who've always seemed to prefer non-customizable, "curated" designs (e.g. historically being anti-widgets, anti-folders, anti-theming, etc) and not from actual Android users who tend to value customization and diverging from the "standard" interface.

Of course, some Android users are going to dislike the new design -- it is a design preference and it's _different_, after all!

I love the new design. There are a few rough edges (like the brightness bar!) but I assume it'll be polished over the multi-year roadmap they've given, or at least through each of the dev previews until the Pixel 6 drops.

Re: Material You – The next stage for Material Design

#54
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel in general Android UI is vastly better than Apple. Apple had a better ui before Material design came into picture.

Would be nice to hear a practical example or two in order to understand from where your opinion springs.

I think the android back button is a good example. Having that exposed at the OS level creates a smoother navigation experience across applications.

Re: Material You – The next stage for Material Design

#55

i find it hard to believe no one maintaining these 'material.io' pages doesn't notice the animated sticky header [0] popping in and out again and again and again as you scroll down the page. [0] https://i.imgur.com/HPLI85T.gif

I don't see that bug on Firefox (version 88, linux amd64). It slides out as I scoll down and stays hidden when I stop scrolling. It only comes back into view when I scroll up.

edit: Are you scrolling with a janky mouse wheel or multi-touch trackpad that might be triggering up events accidentally? It looks like your page jerks up a teeny bit from momentum when you stop--that's probably the issue.

Re: Material You – The next stage for Material Design

#56
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be nice to hear a practical example or two in order to understand from where your opinion springs.

I don't have much experience with iOS products, but I recall early in smartphone history being flabbergasted by the lack of basic affordances like a notification bar, or quick settings (eg to switch wifi on/off). I'd imagine both UIs are vastly different now, so I don't think that these examples are directly relevant. But I heard so much in those days about how iOS's UI was vastly superior and was so shocked by my fi…

To answer your questions:

1. Yeah, still not great. 2. No, homescreen widgets now exist in iOS 3. Short answer is "kind of". There's official support for setting default web & email clients, but many (most?) apps support setting a preference for e.g. mapping providers.

All that being said, I think you're coming at things mostly from a feature angle which is perhaps a different discussion.

From a pure aesthetic consistency, polish, and end-to-end visual experience perspective Apple still does a better job than Google.

Whether or not that extra dash of visual polish makes up for feature deficiencies or ecosystem limitations is a broader question of course.

Re: Material You – The next stage for Material Design

#57

I upvoted solely for the use of an en dash ( – ) in the title, instead of a hyphen ( - ). Probably comes down to personal aesthetics, but I find it looks so much nicer! For users on Windows, I recommend setting up an AutoHotKey script to convert the string "==-" to "–", and "===-" to "—". Easy to type, very intuitive (typing more characters gives a longer-width dash), and gives your carefully crafted email missives a…

Slightly harder to remember, but you can also press Alt+0150 for an en dash or Alt+0151 for an em dash. Works on any machine without any third-party software or configuration!

Re: Material You – The next stage for Material Design

#58
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel in general Android UI is vastly better than Apple. Apple had a better ui before Material design came into picture.

Would be nice to hear a practical example or two in order to understand from where your opinion springs.

The general UI design is far simpler cleaner than iOS. iOS feels very dated. Notification dropdown is a big UI improvement. Navigation is better because of back button unlike the tiny back link in iOS. They did change the time picker which i had issues before because of the scroll picker(my hands are sweaty). These are wrt iPad, which i use mostly for testing iOS apps not a normal day to day use.

Re: Material You – The next stage for Material Design

#59
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel in general Android UI is vastly better than Apple. Apple had a better ui before Material design came into picture.

Would be nice to hear a practical example or two in order to understand from where your opinion springs.

Not original commenter, but some examples of Android's superior UI/UX: - "Back" action is consistent and not in a different spot in each app. - Notifications are more actionable, organized, and clear. - Actions tend to be more clear and discoverable. On ios apps you need to try swiping, clicking, holding, and pinching seemingly random elements to "discover" basic actions. I forgot which app, but one of Apples literally starts you on some screens scrolled a little...and you have to guess you can scroll UP to find extra info and options. - So many extra steps to do anything. E.g. you can turn on/off wifi in quick settings for both, but on Android you can get to your wifi settings by long pressing the quick settings button, but in ios you have to open and navigate through settings. - Can't arrange app icons as flexibly or have widgets on home screen. - ios notification panel has like 3 different modes all with different capabilities and purposes depending on how you open it. - The app settings are ridiculous to navigate in ios. Sometimes they're in app, sometimes in the settings app's app settings pages, and iirc, sometimes in separate settings app pages altogether (e.g. I think permissions or accessibility settings per-app have a whole 'nother place to find them. - Notification page search bar has really poor, irrelevant results that display above the web results you really want. - Scrolling on ios is slower and more jittery than Android these days which surprises me. - Apps look squished and busy with text with ios' UI. Not always clear what's a button, what's swipable, whether you're deeply nested in navigation or at the top, etc. - ios seems to skip loading indicators and just show empty screens, which is really frustrating. - Very subjective but ios emojis have a pseudo-realistic creepy vibe and icky feel to me.

Etc, etc, I have more but I'll stop there :-/ I love my MacBook and use ios for a few professional needs, but ios feels almost unusable in comparison as an everyday device to me.

Re: Material You – The next stage for Material Design

#60

I upvoted solely for the use of an en dash ( – ) in the title, instead of a hyphen ( - ). Probably comes down to personal aesthetics, but I find it looks so much nicer! For users on Windows, I recommend setting up an AutoHotKey script to convert the string "==-" to "–", and "===-" to "—". Easy to type, very intuitive (typing more characters gives a longer-width dash), and gives your carefully crafted email missives a…

I use espanso, and replicate my config between mac and win with syncthing. My system is to put every expansion pattern within colons:

:y: => thumbs up emoji

::): => smiley

:endash: => –

:emdash: => —

I don't know why I hadn't thought of using :--: and :---:, I'm setting that up now, thanks!

Post reply on HN