"Android can be beautiful" eh? Saying it doesn't make it so. As an aspiration it is so far from current reality as to be simply delusional.
Android can be beautiful
111–120 of 163 posts
Re: Android can be beautiful
#112I'm surprised to see so many comments claiming these apps look like Metro. Frankly the level of design on WP is much lower - third-party apps are extremely low quality and all of MS's apps are much simpler and lack the richer textures and details of these apps. Judged on these screenshots, Android looks much nicer than WP, and seems to strike the right balance between clarity and detail.
Re: Android can be beautiful
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are some pretty gaping holes in the compatibility library. Luckily the most important of these (ActionBar support) is covered by a great 3rd party library (ActionBarSherlock). If anything, I think the existence of the compatibility library and ABS show that Google is dropping the ball a bit on the core Android framework. Why even have these be extra (and in one case 3rd party) libraries? Where possible why not…
But Android was designed to allow fallback to older versions. Can you think of a case where you cannot? If anything the compatibility libraries stand as proof.
My point was the fallback should be more seamless (and shouldn't rely on 3rd party FOSS libraries, which it sometimes does).
Example 1: Fragments.
Introduced with Honeycomb. Android supports these via the "support" library back to 1.6, but the APIs you're using are slightly different (eg. getFragmentManager() vs getSupportFragmentManager()) and the classes you use live in different packages (eg. android.app.Fragment vs android.support.v4.app.Fragment). If the support library were more tightly integrated with the mainline SDK, you wouldn't have to worry about all these splits, but it isn't so you do. You have to decide up front if you want to code to the mainline SDK classes or the support versions and then this gets worse when you implement other classes which use Fragments in a library meant for other developers -- should your classes assume those developer's Fragments derive from android.support.v4.app.Fragment or android.app.Fragment? It gets really messy really fast.
Example 2: ActionBar
Not even supported via the regular support library, you have to go get ActionBarSherlock which itself extends the Android support library. Kudos to Jake Wharton on this great library, but why didn't Google just make their ActionBar backward compatible to earlier versions out of the gate? It is clearly possible to do this as ABS does it.
I'm sure there is some specific reason the Android devs could give for why the support lib and the main SDK are so increasingly fragmented and it may have a very good legacy reason for existing, but having them work this way is harmful in the long run, IMO. Maintaining this split makes things much harder for devs just trying to get into Android who are very confused by all the different decisions they have to make just to get basic app functionality working across a decent cross-section of Android devices.
Granted, I'm not saying any of this makes Android development impossible or akin to rocket science, but it does make it needlessly complex which is bad given that Android is already seen as a bit of a red-headed-stepchild to iOS development even despite the overall marketshare advantage Android has.
Re: Android can be beautiful
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
But Android was designed to allow fallback to older versions. Can you think of a case where you cannot? If anything the compatibility libraries stand as proof.
My point was the fallback should be more seamless (and shouldn't rely on 3rd party FOSS libraries, which it sometimes does). Example 1: Fragments. Introduced with Honeycomb. Android supports these via the "support" library back to 1.6, but the APIs you're using are slightly different (eg. getFragmentManager() vs getSupportFragmentManager()) and the classes you use live in different packages (eg. android.app.Fragment…
Google does have a backwards-compatible implementation of the action bar planned but they haven't given a release date. I agree that it shouldn't fall on the Foss community to fill this gap.
Re: Android can be beautiful
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a digression, but there's more truth to this than the snark would indicate. Five years ago, this was a site for hackers building companies, and the emphasis was clearly on the "building" part. It rapidly took over from similar spots (/r/programming, slashdot) as the center of consciousness for web-focused developer discussion. Now, it's entirely preoccupied with the "companies" part -- what platforms to target,…
I would love to find a community for programming-related issues void of all the startup nonsense. Any ideas?
Lambda de Ultimate, but it's programming language-specific.
Re: Android can be beautiful
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a digression, but there's more truth to this than the snark would indicate. Five years ago, this was a site for hackers building companies, and the emphasis was clearly on the "building" part. It rapidly took over from similar spots (/r/programming, slashdot) as the center of consciousness for web-focused developer discussion. Now, it's entirely preoccupied with the "companies" part -- what platforms to target,…
I would love to find a community for programming-related issues void of all the startup nonsense. Any ideas?
What's wrong with /r/programming?
Re: Android can be beautiful
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I kind of doubt that users of low-end phones know what Android is or know what they're missing. It's not like they're downgrading from an iPhone, they're probably upgrading from a feature phone. And even the worst Android phone is much nicer than that. Eventually they will upgrade to a nice Android phone, and will enjoy the enhanced user experience. But cost does matter to some people, and although browsing at 320x24…
I'm a hacker news user, and I have a cheap phone with a 320x240 single-touch screen and keyboard. I don't see what's so bad about browsing the web on it, I can certainly access HN fine enough.
The same could be said about browsing the web with IE6, that doesn't mean that the latest Chrome/Firefox won't provide a much better and smoother experience.
Re: Android can be beautiful
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a hacker news user, and I have a cheap phone with a 320x240 single-touch screen and keyboard. I don't see what's so bad about browsing the web on it, I can certainly access HN fine enough.
The same could be said about browsing the web with IE6, that doesn't mean that the latest Chrome/Firefox won't provide a much better and smoother experience.
Really? I'm not convinced. Double-tap to change column width works pretty well.
Re: Android can be beautiful
#119It can be beautiful on the large-screen top models like Nexus S, S2, S3 and so on that are owned by geeks, not on the LG Optimus-ish and other low-quality phones that regular people buy. On my Samsung Galaxy S Mini not so much, for example I couldn't install Path because the screen is too small.
I'm not sure it's safe to say that the S2 and S3 are mainly owned by geeks. Samsung have done a good job at targeting a similar demographic to the iPhone with those devices.
Re: Android can be beautiful
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a horizontal scrollbar per photoset just below the photo's. I'm guessing this was designed by someone with a multitouch trackpad. I know I tend to forget not everyone else has 2 finger scroll at their fingertips, I've had to get into a habit of having a test run using a mouse when I put together pages.
I see them now. I missed them because they don't look like scroll bars. I don't even know what 2 finger scroll is. I usually scroll with my mouse wheel. To scroll horizontally, I click the middle mouse button. These scroll bars seem not to support that.
I only found them after I went looking because of your comment. Seems weird not just to have the single horizontal scroll at the bottom, it's too fiddly.
Those of us using multitouch trackpads can scroll by just swiping on the page using N fingers, like scrolling on a touch phone by dragging the page with your finger.