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Ars Dissects Android's Problems With Big Screens -- Including In Lollipop
When it comes to tablets, Google
doesn't even follow its own design guidelines." That's the upshot of Ars Technica writer Andew Cunningham's detailed, illustrated look at how Android handles screens much larger than seven inches, going back to the first large Android tablets a few years ago, but including Android 5.0 (Lollipop) on the Nexus 10 and similar sized devices. Cunningham is unimpressed with the use of space for both practical and aesthetic reasons, and says that problems crop up areas that are purely under Google's control, like control panels and default apps, as well as (more understandably) in third party apps.
The Nexus 10 took 10-inch tablets back to the "blown-up phone" version of the UI, where buttons and other UI stuff was all put in the center of the screen. This makes using a 10-inch tablet the same as using a 7-inch tablet or a phone, which is good for consistency, but in retrospect it was a big step backward for widescreen tablets. The old interface put everything at the edges of the screen where your thumbs could easily reach them. The new one often requires the pointer finger of one of your hands or some serious thumb-stretching. ... If anything, Lollipop takes another step backward here. You used to be able to swipe down on the left side of the screen to see your notifications and the right side of the screen to see the Quick Settings, and now those two menus have been unified and placed right in the center of the screen. The Nexus 10 is the most comfortable to use if it's lying flat on a table or stand and Lollipop does nothing to help you out there.
It's certainly timely, now that Google has retired the Nexus 10, and introduced a smaller model.
This pointless review completely misses the point that most people use a tablet to surf, watch video, look at photos and play games. I don't care how the screen is used in Hangouts and Facebook.
Optimizing increases the number of actions that a user performs, which increases how much data the user provides. So why would there be zero reason to spend money on optimizing?
This article relates to something I've been bitching about since the earliest days of tablets: The insistence by Google and many app developers on treating a tablet like a giant phone instead of like a keyboard- and mouse-less computer. Crappy file managers and task management, lousy use of screen space, etc. all add up to an Android tablet being little more than an electronic teat you can use to get content fed into your eyeballs and ears and not something you can do real work (i.e. content creation) with.
Google had a chance with Android to remake the landscape of computing, to turn tablets into genuine alternatives to laptops for many (but certainly not all) users. Instead, they screwed it up (similar to how they failed to challenge MS Office with their own office apps). Are they this incompetent? Are they so focused on making money from content delivery that they can't see the bigger picture? Or do they have an (ahem) incentive not to compete in a bare-knuckles way with MS...?
I begrudge widescreen monitors because they're not widescreen, they're shortscreen. A 4:3 of the same diagonal will give you more usable space and more efficiently use your visual field than a 16:9 or 16:10.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Just look at how google has consistently fucked up UIs by removing functionality and making things more difficult and less efficient in the name of "design" in their other products. The only good thing I can say is that they're not alone, this is a pretty universal trend of idiocy.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
That's because we're still designing the web for 4:3 ratio screens, which are becoming less and less popular. That's like designing the web for 800x600 because there are still monitors with that max resolution floating around. If we would stop with the single-column views (here's looking at you, Slashdot Beta) and provide more useful information density, we could get more productivity out of our websites.
Widescreen monitors also have a unique benefit for coding if they can tilt portrait, you can fit a lot more code on a tall screen than you can on a wide one or square one.
On tablets, the only thing that makes Android better than Windows 8 is the sheer number of apps. Other than that, the actual OS itself is worse in just about every way I can think of. First on large tablets, it's nice to be able to show multiple apps at the same time, and vanilla Android can't do this. It's also nice to be able to map network drives and have all the apps be able to read from them. Android can't do this. Android doesn't come with a command line. Windows has 2. And that's just things that Windows 8 RT does that Android doesn't. Once you get into Windows x86, and the huge list of actual Windows applications it supports, there's no comparison between the two. Android works great on phones, but on tablets it's way too limited, and I'd much rather ne running Windows 8 over Android or iOS.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
If only someone could invent a file format that separates content from presentation, then you wouldn't have to care what screen ratio users had...
I prefer 4:3 over 16:10 for everything but video. It's simply better all the way around. I've tried 16:10 android tablets before and I can't fucking stand them.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
I have a Nexus 10 with Lollipop on it and I really don't see the complaint, at least not the one mentioned in the summary.
Yes, the two swipe-down menus have been unified... but you can still swipe down from the edges to get at it, and in fact you get all of the functionality that used to be in the left and right side swipes from either side now, which means you can get to all of it even if you don't have a hand on each side. Or you can swipe down from the middle. After the unified menu comes up you have to reach over to it with your thumbs to operate the controls and I suppose if you have very small hands that could be an issue. I just asked my wife to try it (she has small hands) and she can reach everything with a thumb while holding it two-handed. She does have to move the thumb hand, but it's a pretty natural motion that doesn't require letting go of the device.
I'm not saying there isn't substance to the complaint, just that the example quoted in the summary isn't really an issue.
Note that getting to the full quick settings UI requires swiping down twice; the first swipe gets you notifications, the second one adds the quick settings. Alternatively, you can do a two-finger swipe down and you get straight to the quick settings. I can't reliably do that with two thumbs (too hard to synchronize the swipes), so that method really does require fingers. But two quick swipes work fine.
On a related note, I like that it works exactly the same from the pre-lockscreen (pops up when you press the power button to turn on the display). The pre-lockscreen shows notifications (whether sensitive notifications can be seen on a locked device is configurable), as though you'd swiped down once, then another down swipe brings up the quick controls, without unlocking. I especially like this when I'm reaching for the flashlight on my phone; no need to unlock, just hit the power button to wake up the screen, then swipe, tap and there's light.
(Disclaimer: I'm an Android engineer at Google, though I work on the low-level security subsystems, not on UI, and have no problems criticizing changes I don't like. I have found very little in Lollipop that I don't like, however, and a lot that I really do like. My only significant complaint so far is the fact that the encryption by default means that when the device boots it can't read any of the storage until you enter your password to unlock it... including any alarms you have set. This means that if your phone/tablet randomly reboots during the night (rare, but it does happen), then your alarm won't go off. This hasn't bitten me, and I doubt it will, but it's not good. On the UI, though... when I go back to a device with KitKat it just feels clunky. Wow, this turned into a lot more than a disclaimer.)
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
There are people called graphic designers, for whom you comment is incomprehensible.
I broke myself of the habit of running many of my desktop applications fullscreen, especially web viewing, since it's pointless. It's frustrating, but it's really web developers fault for insisting on presenting information in a narrow column format. Fixed or maximum width pages drive me bonkers. To this day, most (all?) standard WordPress layouts, for instance, have a maximum width far short of a standard monitor width Why, for heaven's sake? HTML is infinitely malleable in it's native form.
The move to widescreen is certainly a nod to entertainment software, since it's much more suited to playing movies / TV shows and playing videogames in that wide view. It's also really useful in the rarer types of software that edit data in horizontal tracks, such as music sequencers or video editors.
Unfortunately, it's far less useful to those working primarily with text or other largely vertically oriented documents (like programmers). I suspect that's actually *most* computer users, especially business users. However, I also suspect that since resolutions have largely reached a "good enough" state, not a lot of people complain too much about wasted horizontal space in most of their day-to-day tasks. Instead, like me, they probably just use the space to shuffle other windows around.
If you do nothing but write code or work on other vertical documents, then of course you can always tilt that widescreen 90 degrees and get a massive amount of vertical space. Most people don't do this because they still on occasion make use of that widescreen aspect, playing the occasional video or videogame which sort of demands a horizontal aspect ratio.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I'm on the flip side. I absolutely prefer the 16:10 aspect of my Android tablets over my iPad. Especially for apps that take advantage of 2 columns, like email and Firefox's browser -- which puts new windows down the left side. I'm the same for my desktops and absolutely prefer my MacBook Pro's- and Apple 30"'s 16:10 screen over any of my any 4:3 screen I've owned in the past.
So much content is optimized for widescreen these days and I hope Apple's next iPads finally makes move to 16:10(9)... I really don't want to support 4:3 anymore for any of my development work -- call me selfish.
Except that for larger tablets, holding them with two hands is far easier, especially for anything over a few minutes. So no, the reviewer is doing it right.
That's why you go multi-monitor. I have a horizontal (cheap LED-LCD) screen for videos and entertainment, and a vertical screen (more expensive IPS) for getting real work done.
Most people who think this forget about margins and compare to the entire page size. 4:3 is actually the worst aspect ratio. The aspect ratio of a tablet only refers to the screen size. Your tablet already has bezels which act an awful lot like margins. Why do you want to waste valuable screen space on displaying blank margins?
.75" and .875" on the sides (larger margin for the center gutter), .75" and .5" for the top and bottom (larger margin for the page number). That leaves a printed area of 4.375" x 7.75", which is a 1.77 aspect ratio. Almost exactly 16:9 (1.78). If you go with smaller .5" and .75" margins on the sides, .5" and .5" margins on top and bottom, you get a 1.68 aspect ratio - between 16:10 and 16:9.
A trade paperback is typically 6"x9". Margins are asymmetrical, typically
For a regular paperback that's 5"x8", these margins give a 2.0 and 1.87 aspect ratio respectively. For a pocket paperback (4.18"x6.88"), the aspect ratios are 2.2 and 2.0. So for something the size of a phablet or 7" tablet, 16:9 is pretty close to ideal.
"But what about 10" tablets?" The printed area of an A4-sized sheet of paper with 25 cm margins is 1.54:1. Right in between 3:2 and 16:10. A letter-sized sheet of paper with 1 inch margins is 1.38, right between 3:2 and 4:3. However, if you look at anything published on A4-sized or letter-sized paper, the text is nearly always arranged in two columns. So 4:3 and even 3:2 is really too wide for displaying scrollable text. That's why nearly all websites have switched to a format with menus on the left, a narrow column of text, and misc links on the right. The main reason a "page" is this wide is so you can include wider pictures which span both columns. This becomes unnecessary when you can zoom into the picture like on a tablet, or rotate it to landscape mode and have the picture automatically flip to fill the longer width of the screen.
(Also note that the printed area of A4 and letter size paper is actually between 11"-13". Tablets are only 10" because of cost and weight. Assuming the publishing industry knew what they were doing if after centuries of printing they standardized on A4 and letter sizes, 10" tablets are eventually going to be phased out for 11", 12", and even 13" models as technology improves and they become lighter and cheaper.)
Good UI & UX design is hard. Really hard. It's one thing doing a cleanroom design of UX, an entirely other doing it for real life and various screen-sizes - preferably responsive. It's like with the code itself. In dev it will run and work, but beware of post-deployment if you haven't tested your stuff in every possible situation. I did tons of this stuff with Flash back in the day, and even with Flashs superiour visual & direct manupilation workplace and solid cross-plattform compatilibilty it was hard. I remember doing the UI for a flash-based MMO at a gamepublisher some years ago. We worked for months just to get the pageflow of character configuration and setup right. Video-based UX testing with usergroups and all. We'd discuss how and why the rail of a slider would look like X and not like Y.
Now, with HTML5, CSS and JS and all the screen sizes and mouse vs. tough it's by orders of magnitude harder.
It does not get that much easyer when you go native with Android or iOS SDK. You're app and your workflow will always have something significant that a good UI designer would like to highlight or help out in being intuitively usable - without destroying the page- and workflow the user is used to with other applications. It's a really tough job and each and every time it's like jumping off a cliff and not knowing if the parachute will deploy.
I'm one of the rare cases that's actually reasonably good at both - I have various diplomas in art and design and 28 years of programming experience, but I honestly couldn't tell which is harder. Basically both require very hard work if you want to do it well. Good UI is also where shitty backends are exposed. If the backend can't deliver what the user needs, no UX in the world will fix it. A significant portion of the logic is having the computer do what the enduser needs, fast and efficient. If UX and backend development don't work together or one of them doesn't understand the needs of the other, it almost instantly shows in a project. That's the classic difference between Apple and MS, btw. Steve Jobs basically nailed it in this rare direct comparsion comment.
Bottom line: The apps shown in this rundown on lollypop are the best you can get with boilerplate UX. The article basically is right, good UX looks different.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Widescreen monitors start to make sense once you cross a certain resolution threshold. A 1920x1200 or 2560x1440 monitor is brilliant for showing 2 or 3 pages at once side by side. I can comfortably fit two full-sized A4 pages on my monitor, with plenty of room to spare for toolbars etc., or have a web browser on one side of the screen while a full-size 720p video plays on the other.
As resolution increases, aspect ratio becomes less relevant.
Eat the rich.
"I like this, I don't like that." So what? That's just your taste. Yes, that's a starting point, but everyone overestimates how much they understand *other* users.. What you have to do is observe users working with the software for real. And you can't just do it for five minutes and declare yourself an expert; you've got to watch users over the course of years before certain things become clear.
I was for many years a software designer targeting PalmOS and later PocketPC. In the early days we designed what were essentially scaled down desktop applications -- using common sense of course. But unlike many people in the modern App Store environment I had close contact with users. I traveled to user sites to install the software and train the users. I rode in their trucks and watched them using the software in the field. And over the years I began to gain insight into the PDA form factor and how people use it. We all started out with the notion that UI design for handhelds was about dealing with the limitations of a small screen. It took me years to realize that mobile US design was actually about exploiting the potentials of a touch screen you held in your hand. When the iPhone came out I immediately knew that Apple got it: the handheld form factor is about the experience of direct manipulation. By using a capacitive touch screen Apple removed the last perceived intermediary between the user and the things on scree: the stylus.
Now I'm no longer a professional developer, but I do watch how people use their mobile devices with interest. The author is obviously right when he says a tablet is a different animal than a smartphone, but I think he hasn't grasped what the difference is. It's not just about screen real estate; it's about the totality of how the user interactrs with the device. You can't put a tablet in your pocket, and I think that's a much huger difference than it sounds; it stands for a whole lot of other things that are different betwen a palmtop device and one that is simply hand-holdable. For example he likes the idea of widgets that float over the active application as a way of making use of wasted screen real estate. This is technology focused design thinking (how can we use this resource), not user focused. And my admittedly casual observations suggest that this idea is bad for a lot of the way users use tablets.
One interesting development has been the near-disappearnce of handheld computers in the 4-5 inch screen range that *aren't* smartphones. But wi-fi only tablets remain popular. Why should that be? Again I haven't been observing as a developer, but I think it's because people have different application focuses when they use different devices. When you see someone using a smartphone as a computer they're texting, tweeting,instagramming etc. When they're on their tablets they're surfing the web, watching videos, reading ebooks, and playing games. The idea of widgets floating over active content is ideal for someone who uses their tablet like a smartphone. It's not so great for people using tablets in the ways they seem to. Of course some peoiple *do* use their tablets like smartphones. They're the people who drag out their iPad to take a candid photo. Such people exist, we've all seen them, but it doesn't make them typical. I'd guess most tablet owners these days also have a smartphone.
I'm no longer developing, so take this with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that the focus of smartphone use is connecting, the focus of tablet use is consuming, and the focus of desktop use probably should be creating. Blowing up a phone app to a 10.1 inch screen will clearly make it look ridiculous, but it may not matter. What matters is the usability of apps that are built for the things tablet users are focused on.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
4 of those things were developed from shit they purchased.
All you have to do is Google it.