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“Instead, I offer the web. Here there’s beautiful examples of very customized, very different feeling websites.” I think Duarte has the right idea, but I thin

by Osiris 15y ago

“Instead, I offer the web. Here there’s beautiful examples of very customized, very different feeling websites.” I think Duarte has the right idea, but I think it overlooks something very important: It's really hard to make a great looking website. It takes a lot of design skill, graphic art work, and lots of experience with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Where Android is failing is providing a way for new developers with little design experience to make great looking apps that fit in with the rest of the OS. They should be providing awesome built-in UI objects and containers that provide great look and feel. If a developer wants to go their own way and make their app look totally different, they don't have to use the built-in UI elements. They should provide a solid foundation for anyone to make great looking apps, but not require that it be used, or even make the framework extensible and flexible. I've been looking at the WebOS SDK recently and it only takes a few lines of JavaScript to build nice looking apps because all the components are provided. You can still make your own custom components if you want to. Layout is done with various built-in layout components with nice options. The tutorial example has a nice looking interface by the second lesson without any design or graphics work at all. So, Android should provide a UI platform but still allow developers the flexibility to do what they want. They get the best of both worlds.

div 15y ago
Reading the actual interview, it seems that they're working on this: > Matias also told me that a new style guide was being prepped for developers with lots of off-the-rack pieces that would make it easier for third-parties to create the same kind of streamlined, beautiful applications I saw in Ice Cream Sandwich. That short paragraph can mean a lot, here's to hoping that Google bundles this information in a way that is both: - enjoyable for a developer without much design skills - easy to point a new designer to so he can build up a rough framework of how to design for Android Please Google, just don't scatter this info across developer.android.com in that crappy badly thought out tree structure :/
- Osiris 15y ago
  Yeah, I saw that too. One sentence about a new UI framework hardly inspired confidence. Let's hope they do make it easy like you said.
jinushaun 15y ago
I agree. Comparing my personal experience with iOS and Android development, it's much easier to make a decent looking app on iOS because the standard UI elements look good out of the box. I said decent, not great. You run the danger of your app looking too much like the Settings app. (Go to the App Store to see what I mean) However, that can be easily fixed with an SDK update of the UI elements. The bigger problem, IMHO, is Eclipse. Each update of the Android SDK improves the designer in Eclipse, but it's still very awkward to use. The giant properties list is a mess. If Google wants prettier Android apps, it needs to fix Eclipse, or bite the bullet and build a standalone interface builder that treats android views as first class objects. The views are already very loosely coupled from the view controllers, so going to a separate app to deal with the view shouldn't be too bad. Google also needs to populate the standard template with sane defaults. When I say File -> New project, Google should give me a good looking app out of the box. It wasn't until the latest SDK that the designer defaulted to the Nexus One resolution of 480x800. Before that, they were still defaulting to really low resolutions devices (e.g., QVGA). I don't know anyone in my circle of peers with less than 480x800--and this includes non-techies with old/free/cheap Android phones. Secondly, no one uses the "title bar" and that is the first edit I make to the app manifest and designer. Take that out. The default background is black, but very few of the apps I have installed on my phone use a black background. Most are white. I could go on, but this post is already too long.

by Osiris 15y ago

div 15y ago

Reading the actual interview, it seems that they're working on this: > Matias also told me that a new style guide was being prepped for developers with lots of off-the-rack pieces that would make it easier for third-parties to create the same kind of streamlined, beautiful applications I saw in Ice Cream Sandwich. That short paragraph can mean a lot, here's to hoping that Google bundles this information in a way that is both: - enjoyable for a developer without much design skills - easy to point a new designer to so he can build up a rough framework of how to design for Android Please Google, just don't scatter this info across developer.android.com in that crappy badly thought out tree structure :/

Osiris 15y ago
Yeah, I saw that too. One sentence about a new UI framework hardly inspired confidence. Let's hope they do make it easy like you said.

jinushaun 15y ago

I agree. Comparing my personal experience with iOS and Android development, it's much easier to make a decent looking app on iOS because the standard UI elements look good out of the box. I said decent, not great. You run the danger of your app looking too much like the Settings app. (Go to the App Store to see what I mean) However, that can be easily fixed with an SDK update of the UI elements. The bigger problem, IMHO, is Eclipse. Each update of the Android SDK improves the designer in Eclipse, but it's still very awkward to use. The giant properties list is a mess. If Google wants prettier Android apps, it needs to fix Eclipse, or bite the bullet and build a standalone interface builder that treats android views as first class objects. The views are already very loosely coupled from the view controllers, so going to a separate app to deal with the view shouldn't be too bad. Google also needs to populate the standard template with sane defaults. When I say File -> New project, Google should give me a good looking app out of the box. It wasn't until the latest SDK that the designer defaulted to the Nexus One resolution of 480x800. Before that, they were still defaulting to really low resolutions devices (e.g., QVGA). I don't know anyone in my circle of peers with less than 480x800--and this includes non-techies with old/free/cheap Android phones. Secondly, no one uses the "title bar" and that is the first edit I make to the app manifest and designer. Take that out. The default background is black, but very few of the apps I have installed on my phone use a black background. Most are white. I could go on, but this post is already too long.