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Why PBS Won't Do Android
bogaboga writes "You might be wondering why the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service doesn't have a compelling Android footprint. I was wondering too; until they provided the answer. They say, 'Simply put, it’s too complicated for us to even consider an Android app for the first version; we’ll continue to support those viewers with mobile web. ... As we’re focused on the tablet for this project, we’re only designing for the larger screen sizes. But even there, there are a wide range of sizes and aspect ratios. It’s possible to build flexible sizing for these screen layouts, just as we do for the range of desktop web screen sizes. But the flip side to these wide variations is that in a touch experience, ergonomics plays an important role in the design. Navigational elements need to be within easy reach of the edges of the screens since people often are holding their tablets. If the experience is not fine-tuned to each variation the experience would suffer.' They also cite fragmentation. I'm left wondering whether they didn't find support for various screen sizes on Android developer website. Their budget is undoubtedly limited; are their concerns legit? What companies and organizations have developed Android applications that are good to work with on various screen sizes?"
Jesus, give us a break. You can't go to a blog or any other site without being nagged to download their special app, usually via an annoying popup.
It definitely requires more man hours to visually verify things "look like they should" and this is very real with 50+ configurations of OS/screen size.
yes but they shouldn't need to - after 3 it becomes irrelevant if the number is 30, 50 or 2000. their mobile webview certainly isn't tested on 1000 screens - their web version certainly isn't tested on all screen sizes and resolutions(let's just say 20 possible screen sizes and 20 possible different resolutions and 30 possible viewing distances .. you should get the point, you just don't design things in pixel perfect fashion).
it's more of a problem of wanting it too perfect or having designers unable to think in flexible terms - as if they were designing a desktop app with a scaleable window. btw those ui designers are rapidly becoming useless on apple as well, but maybe they'll have few years still on windows phone(why do you think ios7 is flat design and no longer imitations of things draw for that single screen size.. flat design is easier to make flexible, so they went with that, same with metros just text elements floating around style..)...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
...and the 1 star flame review is the enemy of good. We tried android apps and although they worked fine on most devices, we were rewarded with a chorus of whiny complaints and horrible reviews about how the UI wasn't perfect in all orientations and sizes.
Greed is the root of all evil.
UI design needs to have every element scalable by percentage.
Tiny screen? Tiny buttons. Tiny text.
Big screen? Big buttons. Big text.
Then the same application that runs on my Android phone can also run on my Windows/Linux laptop/desktop.
Exactly. It reminds me of the times when there were websites displaying in 640x480 no matter the resolutrion of your screen. Some designers apparently feel excruciating physical pain at the thought that one viewer in podunk might see a single pixel rendered off by 1.
The same people insist on hyper expensive calibrated lights, monitors, paper, and ink to get the colors just right on a flyer even though the readers will be in widely varying light wearing a variety of tinted glasses with completely unknown backgrounds.
They simply don't get relative layouts or the concept that the viewer is supposed to control the presentation.
I used to work with one of these people. I liked him a lot. But he came from the advertising world and from printed media. He was used (years of experience) to being able to start a project with a SIZE.
So the first thing he did on any web project was define a box of a fixed size, and float it in the middle of the page. Change the page size all you liked, the content stayed the same size.
Then he nailed down all the fonts so you couldn't adjust them. He used pictures for text all over the place, because they looked exactly like the fonts he was using, so there was no difference. You wouldn't change the font yourself, right? You'd never know.
And you see this all the time, on the web. Not sure if all the culprits come from print media, but they seem to have that same urge: Control the experience. Completely. Utterly ignore the fact that people have bigger and smaller screens, disabilities which cause them to prefer different font sizes or colors, etc.
"There was a time when everybody thought information and presentation should be separated, and layout should be left to algorithms. Well, that idea failed."
Nonsense. The idea works brilliantly.
Oh, you mean it was rejected by marketing and 'design?' Marketing always wants something new, it can be deeply inferior and that's just fine, that just makes it easier to sell the next piece of crap. Design just wants an excuse to keep fingerpainting and getting paid for it, and in the process they usually find new and interesting ways to break a UI (but never seem all that concerned about fixing one.)
TeX is far superior to any sort of Word Processor, but no one is going to make a mint off it so you will have to figure that out by yourself instead of letting the ads tell you what to do.
Making an app to do something that is already handled just fine in my browser sounds like a waste of time and effort anyhow.
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