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Maybe it's my web-dev background, but Android reminds me a lot of that. When designing a web-app, styling it using CSS is such a fundamental part of it, that it

Maybe it's my web-dev background, but Android reminds me a lot of that. When designing a web-app, styling it using CSS is such a fundamental part of it, that it shouldn't be considered a different activity. No one would seriously put up a webapp that relied on the browser's native rendering of lists, input boxes etc. With the iPhone you do get a lot of that polish for free, whereas with Android the basics won't get you as far. How much more difficult is it? Depends, it's somewhere between an iPhone and a webapp. IIRC, I probably dedicated about 1 week on my last project to this kind of work, which was around 10 weeks. Another thing to consider is how much of that polish is simply due to timing - many iPhone apps have been out there much longer and until it's recent stellar rise, Android was seen as a second-rate platform with far fewer resources devoted to it (for example, the Facebook apps).

Groxx 16y ago
I see a ridiculous amount of fixed-width webpages, which would imply that using even fairly simple, standard components in a fluid way is far more difficult than many developers are interested in doing. Many, not all by any means. Ask an average phone user if they think of the UI as a webpage. Given that nearly all are menu / button based, not links-in-content based, I'd imagine nearly all will say "no". The expectations differ, so their perceptions of the same app differ. Ultimately, which do you want: ubiquitous Android, or geek-only Android? And guess which the average users (and thus hardware makers) want. The push will be to make it ubiquitous, thus successful apps must compete with the iPhone directly in usability and "feel", or people will always feel they've got a second-rate device / application, which is degrading to the whole ecosystem. (for clarification: different devices on the hardware don't bother me for programming - use them or don't, it's your app. The many screen sizes however imply fluid layouts, or huge amounts of fixed + minor fluidity... and clearly nobody wants to make those if they've got careful design (see: webpages). In time with a good library or ten, this could definitely change, as would more focus on design for Android apps. But until that happens, it's fairly damaging to highly-polished apps, which tend to make money more effectively.)
- chaosmachine 16y ago
  Widescreen monitors killed the fluid layout. It's extremely difficult for a website to look good at both 800px wide (typical netbook) and 2560px wide (27" imac).
  - Groxx 16y ago
    Very true, though not restricting me to 800px wide would be nice sometimes. Say, cap it between 800 and 1024 or a bit higher. Too wide is too hard to read anyway. Given the amount of reading I tend to do, and the infinite-scrollability of webpages, I'm often a portrait-mode fan. It just sucks when you need a bunch of applications open for comparison / parallel development. edit: hm. widescreen / horizontal Android devices exist (ODROID). So we're back to the same issue...
- theBobMcCormick 16y ago
  martythemaniak said Android UI development is similar to doing HTML + CSS, he didn't say it's the same. The Android UI layouts are significantly less broken than CSS, even before you include the clusterfuck that is varying browsers support for CSS. If you've ever tried doing a UI Layout for Android, you'll find it's actually pretty damn easy to support multiple resolutions. If you're actually interested, here's the canonical resource on supporting different screen in Android: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html#range http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support... BTW dealing with multiple resolutions is a problem that's rapidly heading to the Apple ecosystem. The iPad is 1024 × 768, the current iPhone is 320×480, the next iphone is rumored to be some multiple of the current iPhone resolution, etc.
  - Groxx 16y ago
    Thanks for the link, hadn't seen anything for Android yet. But it does nothing to alleviate the problem. Re-post of my other comment: You still need to make a ton of resolution-specific images if you want the sharpest possible image, which - again - matters for perceived value. And you're royally screwed if you do pixel-art instead of something easily resized. The issue here isn't for all applications, it's for highly styled applications, which are kicking ass lately and are important for perceived value of a device. Resolution independence and fluid-ish layouts do indeed make basic UI extremely easy. But basic UI evidently can't compete equally with a more stylized UI, as the iPhone shows pretty clearly.

Groxx 16y ago

I see a ridiculous amount of fixed-width webpages, which would imply that using even fairly simple, standard components in a fluid way is far more difficult than many developers are interested in doing. Many, not all by any means. Ask an average phone user if they think of the UI as a webpage. Given that nearly all are menu / button based, not links-in-content based, I'd imagine nearly all will say "no". The expectations differ, so their perceptions of the same app differ. Ultimately, which do you want: ubiquitous Android, or geek-only Android? And guess which the average users (and thus hardware makers) want. The push will be to make it ubiquitous, thus successful apps must compete with the iPhone directly in usability and "feel", or people will always feel they've got a second-rate device / application, which is degrading to the whole ecosystem. (for clarification: different devices on the hardware don't bother me for programming - use them or don't, it's your app. The many screen sizes however imply fluid layouts, or huge amounts of fixed + minor fluidity... and clearly nobody wants to make those if they've got careful design (see: webpages). In time with a good library or ten, this could definitely change, as would more focus on design for Android apps. But until that happens, it's fairly damaging to highly-polished apps, which tend to make money more effectively.)

chaosmachine 16y ago
Widescreen monitors killed the fluid layout. It's extremely difficult for a website to look good at both 800px wide (typical netbook) and 2560px wide (27" imac).
- Groxx 16y ago
  Very true, though not restricting me to 800px wide would be nice sometimes. Say, cap it between 800 and 1024 or a bit higher. Too wide is too hard to read anyway. Given the amount of reading I tend to do, and the infinite-scrollability of webpages, I'm often a portrait-mode fan. It just sucks when you need a bunch of applications open for comparison / parallel development. edit: hm. widescreen / horizontal Android devices exist (ODROID). So we're back to the same issue...
theBobMcCormick 16y ago
martythemaniak said Android UI development is similar to doing HTML + CSS, he didn't say it's the same. The Android UI layouts are significantly less broken than CSS, even before you include the clusterfuck that is varying browsers support for CSS. If you've ever tried doing a UI Layout for Android, you'll find it's actually pretty damn easy to support multiple resolutions. If you're actually interested, here's the canonical resource on supporting different screen in Android: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html#range http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support... BTW dealing with multiple resolutions is a problem that's rapidly heading to the Apple ecosystem. The iPad is 1024 × 768, the current iPhone is 320×480, the next iphone is rumored to be some multiple of the current iPhone resolution, etc.
- Groxx 16y ago
  Thanks for the link, hadn't seen anything for Android yet. But it does nothing to alleviate the problem. Re-post of my other comment: You still need to make a ton of resolution-specific images if you want the sharpest possible image, which - again - matters for perceived value. And you're royally screwed if you do pixel-art instead of something easily resized. The issue here isn't for all applications, it's for highly styled applications, which are kicking ass lately and are important for perceived value of a device. Resolution independence and fluid-ish layouts do indeed make basic UI extremely easy. But basic UI evidently can't compete equally with a more stylized UI, as the iPhone shows pretty clearly.