Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Worse community. I just want /hn/programming.
Android can be beautiful
131–140 of 163 posts
Re: Android can be beautiful
#132Great site, thank you.
Re: Android can be beautiful
#133Android is no longer an ugly-duckling platform trying to catch up with iOS, but a beautiful platform that truly rivals iOS in all important ways -- and now surpasses it in terms of market share. However, mobile app developers have only recently begun to transition from "we need an app for Android too, quick!" to "we need great apps for both Android and iOS," so it will take a little while for all those ugly, hastily-…
What does this site have to do with android anyway? Isn't the article basically saying, its possible to develop good looking apps on android?
The problem with android is that it never had any design language like iPhone and the Windows Phone have. They give a framework for an app developer to work within. It inspires them to make consistent beautiful designs. Android has always been this free-form thing which I think caused many ugly apps to be developed for it.
Windows Phone market place for one is full of such beautiful apps, thanks to the detailed guidelines about the metro design.
Re: Android can be beautiful
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the meaning of taps and swipes is part of the consistency issue. Interaction is more than just "what does swipe do?". It's also "how do I go back?", "how do I take an action on this item?", "how do I change context?". I personally don't run into a ton of issues in iOS with determining what swipes vs long-presses vs long-taps do. Swipes in a list tend to invoke the "delete" context. Swipes up/down scroll. Tap to…
> I personally don't run into a ton of issues in iOS with determining what swipes vs long-presses vs long-taps do. Unless you play games or use some of the most popular twitter clients. ;) > Visually, they're quite different, but there seem to be pretty significant functional differences. To be expected, they do very different things. I chose them because of their differences. Both apps have deviated from a very mell…
> Unless you play games or use some of the most popular twitter clients.
I haven't noticed any weird issues in games, but it's true that I don't play much, nor do I use twitter with any frequency.
> To be expected, they do very different things.
I agree there should be differences. My point is that with these two apps I see almost no actual similarities in the UI. If you'd told me that one of these was an Android app and the other was from, say, Meego, I'd totally have believed it.
> Evaluate their differences as deltas from the Android baseline (the way a user would), instead of as deltas from each other (which is how someone looking at screenshots on a webpage would).
Ok, but the question was whether there was more fragmentation in Android than iOS, and from what I can see the answer still appears to be yes. The deviation from the "baseline" seems higher in Android.
> Oh, because back goes to the last thing you were doing. The chevron goes up in the app. Any Android user figures this out and why it is this way very quickly, but I can see why an iOS user probably finds the distinction weird.
Maybe I'd understand this more if I used an Android device for an extended period of time. It seems that these have a ton of overlap, though. Most of the time, in my experience, up/out is the same as back, because I got to my current location by drilling down through the content. Unless back is only between apps now.
> This is DoubleTwist being cute
I get what they're doing. My point is that it's inconsistent with the platform.
> The ActionBar generally speaks to navigation aspects of the app, not specific screen actions.
Someone should tell the Google+ team. On their ActionBar, I see "write" (new post?), "refresh", "reply", and "upload picture" (I'm guessing).
Re: Android can be beautiful
#135Android is no longer an ugly-duckling platform trying to catch up with iOS, but a beautiful platform that truly rivals iOS in all important ways -- and now surpasses it in terms of market share. However, mobile app developers have only recently begun to transition from "we need an app for Android too, quick!" to "we need great apps for both Android and iOS," so it will take a little while for all those ugly, hastily-…
What does this site have to do with android anyway? Isn't the article basically saying, its possible to develop good looking apps on android? The problem with android is that it never had any design language like iPhone and the Windows Phone have. They give a framework for an app developer to work within. It inspires them to make consistent beautiful designs. Android has always been this free-form thing which I think…
Re: Android can be beautiful
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does this site have to do with android anyway? Isn't the article basically saying, its possible to develop good looking apps on android? The problem with android is that it never had any design language like iPhone and the Windows Phone have. They give a framework for an app developer to work within. It inspires them to make consistent beautiful designs. Android has always been this free-form thing which I think…
http://developer.android.com/design/index.html
This is still a recent development. It never had this originally. Besides going by the ugly apps, it hasn't had much impact so its ineffective at best.
Re: Android can be beautiful
#137There are some very nice looking apps in there. Kind of meta but IMO the screenshots on that site are too big and should be scaled down a bit.
There is a size selector on the left. S M L XL
The XL is the actual size (pixel-wise) that you would see on a phone such as the Galaxy Nexus.
Re: Android can be beautiful
#138Android is no longer an ugly-duckling platform trying to catch up with iOS, but a beautiful platform that truly rivals iOS in all important ways -- and now surpasses it in terms of market share. However, mobile app developers have only recently begun to transition from "we need an app for Android too, quick!" to "we need great apps for both Android and iOS," so it will take a little while for all those ugly, hastily-…
Is there a way to see how the fragmentation (most important for me: screen size) is at this moment? I've got a low end android phone (Galaxy Mini) which works well but I can't install a lot of stuff (Path comes to mind) because of screen resolution. I think the mobile OS market is going to end looking somewhat similar to the PC OS market, but changing Windows for Android. The market share race is impossible for Apple…
I don't think screen size is a big problem for Android. Yes it makes good design harder but not impossible. I think the bigger problem is the inconsistent implementation of low level APIs, broken functionality on specific phones etc. They all require special care which makes developing a high quality Android app very hard. My thoughts on the issue in detail: http://birbit.com/the-real-problem-with-android-fragmentatio...
Re: Android can be beautiful
#139I'm bit surprised by all the comments about "Consistency". All of us use the web every single day and every single website looks completely different, all with their own styles, layouts, color schemes, etc. I would think that web designers, and designers in general, would be happy with the flexibility to create their own thing rather than having something that pretty much looks like everything else. The web used to h…
I'm a bit more surprised by the lack of comments about openness. You would think, that being a site for hackers, being able to install whatever you want on your mobile hand held computer would be a big deal. I mean, most people here would likely not even think of buying a laptop or a desktop that restricted them in the ways that iOS does. Consistency and looks are good and important, but to me, secondary to control.…
Unfortunately, your phone with Android is not a computing platform, because you cannot run everything you want on it without jailbreak. I needed to root my phone (Google Nexus Galaxy, unlocked) and void warranty to install jellybean :(
Google makes it a bit easier, ... Yet, my iphone is also jailbroken and I can run anything. I would love to have a truly open phone with a truly open-source os (like Maemo was). No cripple-ware like Android and iOS.
Re: Android can be beautiful
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish Google would force manufacturers to stop using the 320x240 resolution. The browsing experience is very poor on such a resolution, unless you're using Opera Mini perhaps, and I imagine it's hard for developers to refit their apps for such a small resolution, too, as even menu text will take a lot of space on that resolution. I also wish they mandated everyone has at least 512 MB of RAM in their phones, and at l…
Wouldn't high end mandates just lead to the low end being dominated by forks? Wouldn't that be worse for (1) customers, (2) android's reputation and (3) Google?
What I've suggested in the past is that Google introduce a new brand like "Android Platinum" for the high end. For manufacturers to be allowed to use the brand, they'd have to meet requirements on minimum specs and commit to timely OS updates for some period.