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Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

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Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#81

Post by nysv »

sbuk wrote: post #70
nysv wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There also seems to an element of elitism among Apple fanboys, thinking their design is the only one that matters. "Android users obviously picked their device for other reasons than design, so it doesn't have to look as good."

> ..."element of elitism among Apple fanboys," Let's not use pejoratives. While we are at it, let's not project our own assumptions as points of fact.

You are right, I have but a little anecdotal evidence. In my experience there does exists a group of designers who view Apple to be the gospel of UI design, which can sometimes lead to them ignoring other schools of thought.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#83

Post by RyanZAG »

nemothekid wrote: post #55
fpgeek wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

You just make your app out of fragments and then use different layouts based on screen size to arrange your fragments. It's pretty straight forward and really not the problem. For general reactive design like on websites, you can just set up your layout in XML to grow correctly to fit the screen, which is something it does by default.

The real problem is that Android very heavily links layout with function. In HTML-land, a designer who knows a bit of html and css can happily redesign the layout of the page. In iOS-land, a designer can use UIBuilder to redesign the layout of the page as well (they usually break it too by dragging stuff inside other stuff, but it's visual and generally fixable). In Android, redesigning the layout of an app is generally very complex and nearly always requires major code changes because of how fragments are forced to interact through the activity god object.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#84

Post by yaeger »

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…

I haven't checked on Android as a platform in quite a long time but it is amazing to see that things still are exactly where they were when I last checked.

Android == Google == Free Software

That still seems to be the basic idea many users have. It was always weird to see a platform with such high market share compared to iOS can not even get close to what iOS rakes in as revenue and mobile traffic.

If one looks at the numbers it's staggering that a platform with so many active devices cannot even get close to the mobile traffic that iOS generates. And no, I do not think that Android users just use apps and that's why you don't see regular mobile traffic from them. iOS also has apps and personally, I use mostly apps and don't surf that much using the browser.

Still, even back when I last checked people where projecting this to be a temporary thing and things would soon change to reflect Androids market share in the mobile revenue and mobile internet traffic statistics. Apparently, that does not seem to be the case. The Google == Free mentality seems to be too ingrained in people's minds. And I guess the recent privacy issues don't help there. "If they all gonna get my personal infos, then I surely won't pay for the app" seems to be the rational.

And why shouldn't it? It was long since established that if something is free, you are not the customer, you are the product. And if every other app seems to try and collect your info, of course you want the app to be free.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#85

Post by doctorcroc »

whytaka wrote: post #40
Zigurd wrote: post #6

I was able to successfully train a designer to use the Android SDK's tools when appropriate, and check in graphical assets. In preparatory meetings I insisted the designer be in the room with the coders and product managers as I explained how Android is different. I taught them all how to use conditional layouts and how to test apps for good practices by changing font sizes to see if they really are geometry-independ…

As an app designer, I wouldn't mind a lesson myself!

Likewise. Zigurd, would you mind writing up a short lesson?

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#86

Post by masklinn »

batiudrami wrote: post #21
joezydeco wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you read about stuff like this[1]: "Mika says it spent 20% of its total development time last year on the process of porting two of its games to Android and then tweaking those titles for individual devices. It could never even get Battleheart to work on Galaxy S phones, because they can't download .apk's larger than 30MB with stock software . For all the months of "thanklessly modifying shaders and texture…

That's the original Galaxy S, a device which is now 5 years old. There are plenty of apps which no longer support iPhones that old. "It's too hard" or "it doesn't make enough money" are more than reasonable. A software limitation in a 5 year old device is not.

You apparently missed that the article itself is from March 2012, talking about a game (Battleheart) released in June 2011.

The Galaxy S was released in June 2010 (so it's not even 4 years old, let alone 5…), it was barely a year old at game release and was not only one of the popular smartphones of the times, as the Nexus S it was also the reference device until November 2011.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#87

Post by CaRDiaK »

andrewflnr wrote: post #43
eropple wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eclipse is the default for most Java development, but I know fairly few serious Java developers who use it. Some do, I'm not saying they don't exist, but IntelliJ--of which Android Studio is a fork--is generally the go-to tool amongst the experienced, skilled Java folks I know. Double for Scala. (I used nothing but IDEA for Android work at my last job, for about eighteen months - Eclipse is certainly not required and…

I was wondering how IDEA compared to Eclipse for android dev, in large part because I'm interested in porting my app to Kotlin, if it's not too huge a jump. It's good to hear that it works well, despite not being the "official" default.

Although I cannot compare to Eclipse. I'm a .NET Dev with an interest in Android. In fact I'm falling out with MS and sticking to that for a day job, but want to do Java / Android in my spare time. I've just completed the Courera programming Android course and I did the whole thing in IDEA community edition. I had no problems what so ever getting answers to any questions. I was relatively comfortable and productive within about 20 hours. I had no previous Java experience (although I'm a clean C# coder for over 6 years)

I was impressed with the tools you get out the box. I've paid hundred (close to thousands) for similar tools in .NET.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#88

Post by bluefinity »

chroem wrote: post #35
georgemcbay wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been writing Android code for close to 3 years now and I can tell you the problem isn't you. Android layouts are like CSS in that eventually they warp your brain to the point where you can mostly understand them and be productive with them, but they are still kind of ridiculous and make doing things that should be relatively easy much harder than they ought to be. Sadly the whole way the layout system works seep…

Really? I picked up CSS in a few hours but I still can't begin to wrap my head around how to properly work with Android layouts. I really wish Google would let people use HTML and CSS instead of that bizarre relational XML stuff.

PhoneGap is exactly that, with the bonus that's it's also cross platform.

http://phonegap.com/

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#89

Post by rquirk »

weixiyen wrote: post #54
tomasien wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do not like Eclipse - it is clunky and often requires restarts to pick up changes or clear itself of confusion - and have never used Android Studio, but AFAICT the latter is still not the recommended editor according to the Android documentation - https://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html says "If you're a new Android developer, we recommend you download the ADT Bundle to quickly start developing apps." The ADT bundle is Eclipse-based. On the Studio page it warns "Caution: ... you may encounter bugs" (though as I say, with Eclipse I'm also sure you'll encounter your fair share of bugs!)

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#90

Post by wisty »

> 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 uncharitably, the root issue is “Android users are poor”.

How about "Android users want a phone, not apps". If you want a phone, you get an Android. If you want apps, you get an iPhone.

Look at the stats for web use. In 2012, there was more Android Webkit use of cellular (more users?), but far more Mobile Safari if you included WiFi. An iPhone / iPad is used as a computer, Android is a phone and mobile browser (for when you can't use a real computer).

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