On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 1:47 PM, Latimerius <[email protected]> wrote: > As I haven't ever heard pretty much *any* reason for that, good or > bad, I tend to think dumping it was rather a boneheaded idea.
I can't speak to why they elected to grant device manufacturers the freedom to skip off-screen controls. For all I know, it is YAAP (Yet Another Apple Patent). However, that does not change the fact that they *did* give device manufacturers the freedom to skip off-screen controls. Now, if all finger paint apps for children on Android got low ratings and had on-screen controls, I would at least entertain the notion that correlation might indicate causality, and the on-screen controls were the source of the low ratings. However, a quick glance at the search results and examining the screenshots indicate that there are several finger paint apps for children with on-screen controls *and* 4-star ratings (and on 1000+ ratings, not just a handful). To claim that on-screen controls are somehow impractical for finger paint applications for children, therefore, seems to be inaccurate, and creating an intentionally future-resistant finger paint application for children just to avoid on-screen controls is not wise. Furthermore, it is ludicrous to think that a child will somehow tap on some on-screen control, yet not tap on a menu affordance in the system bar nor click on a dedicated off-screen MENU button. If anything, a well-designed on-screen control could be *less likely* to be accidentally invoked than would legacy menu affordances, by making it slightly more challenging to trigger than just a tap (e.g., physically smaller, tap-and-hold, tap-and-slide). While it is impossible to prevent a child from doing any of these things, you actually have control over an on-screen mechanism that you do not have for anything else and therefore can take steps to reduce the odds. If the issue is aesthetics, make the on-screen control invisible, perhaps appearing after a period of inactivity or after the screen has turned off and back on. You could even make the on-screen control simply be not there except after inactivity or a screen off/on cycle, so that a parent can readily get to the control after retrieving the device from the child. Or find other ways of solving the problems formerly handled by an in-app menu (e.g., auto-save after inactivity, so the parent does not need to explicitly save from the paint activity but can go into a separate activity to review saved pictures and remove them). And so on. Now, I cannot speak for your app, because I don't know what it is. Perhaps you could consider submitting it for the developer relations Friday App Review thing, specifically asking for ideas for how to address your variant on this issue, and try to get Googly input on the matter that way. -- Mark Murphy (a Commons Guy) http://commonsware.com | http://github.com/commonsguy http://commonsware.com/blog | http://twitter.com/commonsguy _The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development_ Version 3.8 Available! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
