What’s Missing in Android Intents

#1

Post by ananddass » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 4:50 PM UTC

What’s Missing in Android Intents
blog.inkmobility.com

Re: What’s Missing in Android Intents

#2

Post by Groxx » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 5:34 PM UTC

tl;dr: inconsistent interface, no recommendations when nothing can handle it.

Generally quite true, though the 'share' icon on Android is pretty consistent. Easily 95%+ of the apps I've used have used that same icon.

A lot of this would be / could be solved by having some way you could replace the system's chooser. I hadn't thought of that before reading this article, but that would be pretty darn cool, and could be a significant improvement.

Re: What’s Missing in Android Intents

#3

Post by danpalmer » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 6:22 PM UTC

What's missing in iOS: Intents.

Re: What’s Missing in Android Intents

#4

Post by Zigurd » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 7:00 PM UTC

Groxx wrote: post #2

tl;dr: inconsistent interface, no recommendations when nothing can handle it. Generally quite true, though the 'share' icon on Android is pretty consistent. Easily 95%+ of the apps I've used have used that same icon. A lot of this would be / could be solved by having some way you could replace the system's chooser. I hadn't thought of that before reading this article, but that would be pretty darn cool, and could be…

If you don't like the system picker, you can pick the target before the StartActivity call using your own UI.

Re: What’s Missing in Android Intents

#5

Post by Zigurd » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 7:05 PM UTC

tl;dr Coder's boss complains "Why can't this be like it is on my iPhone." Coder complains "Why can't Google make it easy for the cases that kind of map to iPhone functionality to have a pre-cooked UI (I suppose ShareActionProvider isn't quite it?)

The real problem is too few apps implement too few Intent filters other than Intent.ACTION_SEND.

Re: What’s Missing in Android Intents

#6

Post by Groxx » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 8:43 PM UTC

Zigurd wrote: post #4

Groxx wrote: post #2

tl;dr: inconsistent interface, no recommendations when nothing can handle it. Generally quite true, though the 'share' icon on Android is pretty consistent. Easily 95%+ of the apps I've used have used that same icon. A lot of this would be / could be solved by having some way you could replace the system's chooser. I hadn't thought of that before reading this article, but that would be pretty darn cool, and could be…

If you don't like the system picker, you can pick the target before the StartActivity call using your own UI.

True, but this would be even more inconsistency, as each app has to do it themselves.

Re: What’s Missing in Android Intents

#7

Post by bikas » Sun, Sep 22, 2013, 12:54 PM UTC

tl;dr Because developer neither wasted time on Android apps nor learnt how to code properly, these kind of blog pops up. There's absolutely no random action when user presses a button, it's clear to person of intelligence level of 5 year old. Maybe author lacks that. Share intenet is quite robust even if for default gallery app shown. First, it only shows the apps that can share images/video, and also remembers the most used share so that user don't have to click to see share pop-up at all.