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Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

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Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#51

Post by [deleted] »

fpgeek wrote: post #38
sedev wrote: post #34

> The other replies were mostly variations on the theme that Android users don’t pay for apps, they don’t have data plans, you can’t monetise them easily, and designers are all iPhone users and don’t really understand Android users … Socially, excluding Android users seems almost prejudicial. Unlike Android is difficult, this isn’t about about mere convenience; it’s a value judgment on who is worth designing for. Put…

> The equivalent of web standards that would allow an Android app to do responsive design in the manner of a web app, devices don't have or respect. Oh, really? Let's take a look shall we: 1. Using new APIs if available and falling back gracefully if not: http://developer.android.com/training/basics/supporting-devi... 2. Adapting your layout and UI to each device based on screen size, density and other features: http…

[deleted]

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#53

Post by rmrfrmrf »

Ologn wrote: post #36
tomasien wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eclipse is also HORRIBLE. Horrible, horrible horrible. Objective-C isn't exactly easy to understand, but Xcode is. I could functionally make things work in Xcode in 2 days having no experience with C or Objective C, I've probably spent 6 weeks in Eclipse in my life and I still couldn't really tell you how to do things. I have to re-learn it every time I want to do something, especially with the UI.

Eclipse (or Android Studio) is good for when you are getting your feet wet with Android. If you don't like using it there are alternatives. I usually use Emacs or vi. The only thing I miss when not using Eclipse with the ADT plugin is after typing say "LinearLayout ll;" with Eclipse I can type Control-Shift-O and the LinearLayout class is automatically imported in the code. I miss this, but I kind of have this in Ema…

I'm pretty sure the idea is to get more GUI-based, not less. Telling a designer to use vi instead of Eclipse for UI is pretty hilarious.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#54

Post by weixiyen »

tomasien wrote: post #13
jaydz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give Android Studio a shot. Makes laying out the UI in XML a breeze with its excellent intellisense.

I've heard that, and that's fine - I appreciate the suggestion and will probably use it, but if that's actually the best then people will take Android dev more seriously when the best is the standard IDE. Right now Eclipse is the default and it blows.

Android Studio is the recommended IDE for any new projects. It's made by JetBrains, and it's 100x better.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#55

Post by nemothekid »

fpgeek wrote: post #38
sedev wrote: post #34

> The other replies were mostly variations on the theme that Android users don’t pay for apps, they don’t have data plans, you can’t monetise them easily, and designers are all iPhone users and don’t really understand Android users … Socially, excluding Android users seems almost prejudicial. Unlike Android is difficult, this isn’t about about mere convenience; it’s a value judgment on who is worth designing for. Put…

> The equivalent of web standards that would allow an Android app to do responsive design in the manner of a web app, devices don't have or respect. Oh, really? Let's take a look shall we: 1. Using new APIs if available and falling back gracefully if not: http://developer.android.com/training/basics/supporting-devi... 2. Adapting your layout and UI to each device based on screen size, density and other features: http…

You posted three links to the android documentation that don't address sedev's point at all.

Your first point doesn't address the "falling back gracefully" part. The second part of that example, the ActionBar, which was introduced in ICS, IIRC, only has a community shim. Granted if you want to use a new API that may not have as much community support as the ActionBar, you either code one yourself (strengthening the sedev's point that you have to design the same functionality across multiple versions).

Your second point is even more off base. With the web's responsive design, I have to make one HTML file, and one CSS file, and if my design is sane, it works across all screen sizes. Your second link requires you to hand code different layouts for every device size which is hardly a solution - infact you are back squarely where you started. And I'm unsure if you actually read those tutorials but they don't even seem to have been updated since eclair. IIRC, you only had to deal with 3 sizes then - ldpi, mdpi, and hdpi. I haven't done Android dev in a while, but I'm sure the number of layouts have tripled.

If you really want to counter sedev's point, you should point to an app with the relevant code that actually does what sedev is talking about and not some links to the documentation. Everyone is already aware of the documentation, and if it actually worked as you said it did, we would not be having this conversation.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#56

Post by weixiyen »

Money is in iOS, so companies prioritize it first. After Android becomes the main platform for monetization, it will probably be taken a lot more seriously.

Right now it goes like this in every company.

1) Lets make an iOS app

2) okay we have an iOS app, can someone clone an Android one real quick? It doesn't have to be perfect, just get it done ASAP.

> I recognise that I have a fairly rare stance, given the ideology that surrounds platform issues.

It's not a rare stance. Android is the hot thing now and has been gaining tons of momentum.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#57

Post by runewell »

georgemcbay wrote: post #17
mmuro wrote: post #10

Fragmentation is a real thing, not laziness. Almost 98% of Android users don't run KitKat.

It is both a real thing and laziness. With decent technical design and Google's Android support library you can pretty much code as if 98% of people run KitKat and not worry about it, the support library will fallback gracefully down to all the OS versions you do care about. Most of the time when I hear designers complaining about Android fragmentation they are really just using "fragmentation" as a scapegoat to bemo…

So you're saying it's easier to design on iOS then.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#58

Post by balladeer »

tomasien wrote: post #5
wallflower wrote: post #3

From personal experience and from hearing 1st person stories of startups who went Android second, it takes at least 2x to even 3x the amount of time to build an Android app. This is why when a very talented Android engineer like Sarah Haider (Twitter's Android lead) goes from Twitter to Secret, it is a big deal. There are many strong, capable iOS technical leads out there and probably a fraction thereof in Droidlandi…

Eclipse is also HORRIBLE. Horrible, horrible horrible. Objective-C isn't exactly easy to understand, but Xcode is. I could functionally make things work in Xcode in 2 days having no experience with C or Objective C, I've probably spent 6 weeks in Eclipse in my life and I still couldn't really tell you how to do things. I have to re-learn it every time I want to do something, especially with the UI.

My honest response: it's not the IDEs fault. By the way I had felt the same with XCode and I don't think I can blame XCode for this.

I code in MacVim. For anything, not just Android and I didn't like either Eclipse or XCode, XCode even lesser as mentioned above.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#60

Post by ekux44 »

fpgeek wrote: post #38
sedev wrote: post #34

> The other replies were mostly variations on the theme that Android users don’t pay for apps, they don’t have data plans, you can’t monetise them easily, and designers are all iPhone users and don’t really understand Android users … Socially, excluding Android users seems almost prejudicial. Unlike Android is difficult, this isn’t about about mere convenience; it’s a value judgment on who is worth designing for. Put…

> The equivalent of web standards that would allow an Android app to do responsive design in the manner of a web app, devices don't have or respect. Oh, really? Let's take a look shall we: 1. Using new APIs if available and falling back gracefully if not: http://developer.android.com/training/basics/supporting-devi... 2. Adapting your layout and UI to each device based on screen size, density and other features: http…

I do not know how graceful falling back is in web development, but there are some non-graceful holes in what can be accomplished with Android compatibility libraries

The biggest design-impacting issues I've encountered are the absence of expandable or interactive notifications pre 4.1 and limitations in styling/visualizing list selection states pre 3.0

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