91–100 of 114 posts
OK, this is completely and absolutely inspired. Brilliant, especially the redirect handling. The design needs a bit of polish, but the core concept is just so damn good it's blatantly going to be copied.
> The design needs a bit of polish, but the core concept is just so damn good it's blatantly going to be copied. Chris Lacy (the author) delayed the release because he was encouraged to patent the idea. Looks to me like that was a good move.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is like saying the IPhone is a copied "concept" from other touchscreen devices.
Well, to be fair, Facebook was the company that created the always open "floating bubble" concept, to my knowledge. Link Bubble behaves very similarly to Facebook Messenger in this way (the way the bubbles move, how you interact with them, close them, etc), and I can't help but think that Facebook was inspiration for the project. This is actually a good thing because I always thought that the Chat Heads were a novel…
When is this coming to tablets, Chris?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For what it's worth, he explains his reasoning here: https://plus.google.com/104649936579980037256/posts/GAWL1HpQ...
So he hates patents and the lawsuits they bring, but he feels it'll be a great asset to have in the future? It really doesn't sound like he hates them to me.
Just a few questions/suggestions:
1. It would be good to highlight in the tutorial that the free version only works for links from a single app (usually Chrome). I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how it worked - and when it didn't - before I found the correct setting. Perhaps I missed something?
2. Is there a way to close an individual bubble in a group?
3. Is there a way to move a bubble into a new group?
4. The contrast on the number indicator could be much higher; in any sort of outdoor setting it is completely unreadable. Would be great to just use white on black.
Cool app; keep going!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So he hates patents and the lawsuits they bring, but he feels it'll be a great asset to have in the future? It really doesn't sound like he hates them to me.
I think he's just playing the game as the rules are written right now. He doesn't have to like patents to know that they are currently one of the best ways to protect himself. I'm not a fan of the current system, but if I found myself in a similar position, I'd certainly review my options as well.
If you mean he protects himself from people 'taking' his idea, then he clearly doesn't hate software patents because that's what they achieve. What do you hate about them if you want this protection?
If you mean he protects himself from someone else patenting the same idea, filing a patent doesn't do this. As long as he has his ducks in a row to demonstrate that his work constitutes prior art (which he might have to do anyways if, say facebook comes out and tries to patent what sounds like a similar idea). Realistically, the odds that, against a larger competitor, he wouldn't have to go through the same process either way (a legal battle and/or settlement) seem strikingly low to me.
If you mean he can play the defensive patent shell game and cross-license to settle, one patent won't really do that unless you pool in with an NPE that collects patents, and that also seems rather contrary to the idea of hating software patents.
The general idea of creating overlays for actions that take awhile to complete should really be integrated into the system itself. It's a really good idea that the desktop gets around by allowing multiple windows at once. On a phone with only 1 window, it's a really obvious solution that surprisingly hasn't been used much before. I think the origin of the idea is probably Facebook's Android app where contacts are lit…
This was the feature of Android that got me really excited when Google first announced it. The whole idea of Intents is that you can have a stack of things you're doing; clicking a link will open a new Activity on the top of the stack and hitting Back will pop that Activity off the stack.
As Android was originally pitched, Applications shouldn't be the fundamental unit of navigating through your phone because you don't usually think in terms of "and now I want to open Chrome", but in terms of "I would now like to open this link". If you're reading an sms and click a link your buddy sent you, then from that webpage click another link that opens twitter you've found yourself in a "Task" with three separate Activities in it. You can then context switch to a different task and eventually back to this one with all your Activities waiting right where you left them.
But it seems Google has given up on that vision. Developers were given too much control over tasks and the "back stack" and too little education on thinking with Activities so they happily went along and tried to make monolithic applications. Like web browsers which tie all your tasks together into one app that has a bunch of tabs. What does the back button in Chrome do? Nobody ever knows. The back button in Chrome conflates your tab history with your Task history and makes them interact in convoluted ways. If it didn't expose tabs open in other tasks and treated every forward navigation like creating a new tab the Back button would be perfectly intuitive.
I mainly blame Google for never making your back stack explicit. To this day it's difficult to tell where the Back button will send you because Android never shows you (Also because some apps try to get smart and rewrite history at terribly inappropriate times, have I mentioned I hate Chrome?). The app switcher shouldn't be a list of the last Applications you've used but a list of your last few Tasks.
So, I don't agree that overlays should be part of Android 5. I think that the App Switcher should be given some real teeth, Intents should be overhauled, and all the default apps should rewritten to show developers how to think using Tasks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it's closed source. I can't see a realistic alternative to this given I'm trying to make a living selling the app. But FWIW, I can promise you I don't transfer your browsing history. My policy on such data is I simply don't want to ever have a copy of it. If that means I can't sync your history between Link Bubble installs, so be it.
I think an interesting middle ground would be to connect to existing browser sync storage. Personally, one of the (few) disadvantages of Link Bubble is that my Link Bubble history is separate from my main browser history (I don't really want to remember whether I read something in Link Bubble or elsewhere if I'm trying to find it later). Connecting to existing sync services would be a nice way of dealing with that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think an interesting middle ground would be to connect to existing browser sync storage. Personally, one of the (few) disadvantages of Link Bubble is that my Link Bubble history is separate from my main browser history (I don't really want to remember whether I read something in Link Bubble or elsewhere if I'm trying to find it later). Connecting to existing sync services would be a nice way of dealing with that.
What services are you talking about? The history Android permission, or something else? Certainly I don't think there's any such API for Chrome.
I find it a bit surprising that Chrome doesn't have something similar (or is the relevant sync code just too buried in Chromium?).