6 ms·

Say Goodbye to the Menu Button

64 points by cleverjake 15y ago

nextparadigms 15y ago
Is it possible to say goodbye to all the buttons and replace them with UI gestures?
- sp332 15y ago
  What gesture means "navigate from here to home and avoid tolls"? http://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/gui-programmer.html http://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/gui-programmer.html
- aen1 15y ago
  Is it possible to go back to phones with physical buttons? When it was obvious where to press, and not a guessing game?
  - seltzered_ 15y ago
    There's some advantage with not having physical buttons. Most notably you can quickly "cancel" an intended action with a non-physical button by sliding your finger away from it while holding down. e.g. you're playing a game and accidentally press the home button. slide away to continue playing. You can't do that with a physical button unless they implement something where holding the button down causes a less intrusive action. iOS does this i believe by not exiting the app but bringing up the multitasking menu when you hold down the home button. I currently have a thinkpad tablet with physical buttons, and I'm afraid of using them half the time because of accidentally hitting them.
  - the-cakeboss 15y ago
    I don't understand how a gestural interface would become a guessing game any more than physical buttons would be. Regardless whether your interface be gestural or physical certain actions would presumably do different things depending on the current context. Instead of remembering to press a particular button, one would remember a particular gesture. Unless you are talking about guessing whether your gesture was recognized.
- radley 15y ago
  It's not a matter of gestures insomuch as using the multi-touch screen effectively.
CoffeeDregs 15y ago
I gotta say that this change makes me feel a little funny. I use Android after switching from an iPhone, I like Android and I like the menu button. Further, I understand that there are relatively few ways to do what needs to be done to support application options. Further, further, I understand that Apple and Android have blatantly lifted bits from each other. But isn't this a near pixel-perfect copy of iOS's options buttons? I was kinda happy when iOS stole Android's notifications behavior because I could feel a little superior for using Android. Now they're stolen something else from iOS, I feel a little less superior. And I realize these are big mean companies, but still I can root for one of them...
- untog 15y ago
  iOS's option buttons? No, not at all. They're a near-pixel perfect copy of Windows Phone's option bars: http://mobileworld.appamundi.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.UserFiles/00.00.00.21.04/PerstSearch.jpg http://mobileworld.appamundi.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__k...
  - CoffeeDregs 15y ago
    Ah. By which I meant: http://www.idownloadblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Music-App-iCloud-iOS-5-2.png http://www.idownloadblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Musi... Looks very similar to: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u-3KNfy5n9M/TyG235X2rGI/AAAAAAAABHM/g_qGEXBdJW8/s400/image00.png http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u-3KNfy5n9M/TyG235X2rGI/AAAAAAAABH... and http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KIyVJ4DBLdw/TyGbNsLn4hI/AAAAAAAABFs/xgLPIAaEP6I/s400/image01.png http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KIyVJ4DBLdw/TyGbNsLn4hI/AAAAAAAABF... albeit with orientation or location changes.
    - eelco 15y ago
      That's not an option button on iOS. It leads to a menu of 'secondary' menu items, that are hierarchically on the same level as the other tabs.
rufugee 15y ago
Tell you what...I'm a big Android fan. However, the removal of the menu button and the addition of the "..." action overflow button is the single biggest UX mistake I've seen on Android so far, for a very simple reason...the "..." is too small to easily press, and appears at different (mostly inconvenient) places on the screen. For example, a large part of the time it's on the far right hand side. As a guy who keeps his phone in his left hand most of the time, and who typically operates his phone with one hand, I have to reach across the entire phone with my thumb and hope to hit it. Not so with the menu button...it was easy to hit, and even if I had to reach across, it was easy to "feel" my way to it. I miss it quite a bit.
- cheald 15y ago
  I absolutely, fully, 100% agree with this. "Hunt the back/options button" drives me nuts on iOS. The ramifications of this are that when options aren't "pretty", they are hard to get to - on iOS, if you want to change Safari settings, you have to exit Safari and go open a separate Settings app to change them. I swear under my breath every time I have to do it. The physical back button is the single most powerful feature Android has over iOS, and the physical menu button isn't far behind. A single, consistent, verb for "give me more things to do with this view" is so much better than "guess which button/graphic/icon on this screen means 'menu', then find out where it is, then press it even though it's only 6px by 6px, because we didn't want it to overwhelm our listview". Maybe a compromise could be reached by either a) adding a visual cue that there are menu actions for the current view, or b) making menu buttons in your app invoke the same menu that pressing the menu button would. I feel like this is trending towards "iOS works with only one button, we should too", and I think it's the wrong step. The search button I could kind of see - it was nice, but rarely used just due to the nature of how mobile apps were built. The menu button? Leave it alone, please. I like it just how it is.
  - ugh 15y ago
    But the back button is horrible now that it doubles as an up button. It confused me and that kind of behavior makes it utterly useless. It’s a waste of space.
AndrewDucker 15y ago
I _like_ having physical buttons. I can reach for them and they're right where my muscle memory expects it to be. I'm about to upgrade to the Nexus and I expect to miss the physical back button a lot.
- olex 15y ago
  Agreed... my Desire is currently almost 2 years old and I'm getting a contract renewal in a month, and I have no idea what phone to get: there are no smartphones with proper hardware buttons on the market anymore, save for a few SE handsets; it's all in useless capacitive buttons now, or none at all since ICS.
gxs 15y ago
Soon they will do away with the back button, the search button, and leave only the home button. Where have I seen this before?
- beej71 15y ago
  I hope not--the back button really makes it all possible.
  - sukuriant 15y ago
    I concur. The back button is the single greatest feature of Android. I do not understand why they're removing the menu button. Personally, I think it's a terrible decision for all the reasons listed here; however, the greatest feature that Android had over iPhone, period, were multitasking and the back button. Both of those features did, and continue to work hand in hand to make it a pleasant experience.
rodh257 15y ago
I liked the menu button because it meant that you always knew where to go to get menu options. On iOS many apps have different symbols and locations for settings and as a daily Android user I've found it annoying searching for them. On ICS it's silly checking down the bottom right (where the software buttons are) and sometimes top right (action bar) for the menu button, and if they are deprecating the bottom right/menu button option I can see it becoming just like iOS. When the action bar concept doesn't fit into the design developers will just have to shove menu options at a random place in their UI. I cannot comprehend how that is a better option than having a soft/hard menu button in the same place all the time.
- dsr_ 15y ago
  ...and what UX "expert" decided that when menu (or action overflow) would appear, sometimes it would be down, sometimes up top, and sometimes (I kid you not) both? It's software: if you're going to display something, be consistent about it! It's the single most annoying thing about ICS. It's more annoying than the 4.5 hour usable battery life on the Galaxy Nexus. (You get 4.5 hours of screen-on time. You can manage close to 20 hours, if you don't actually use the thing, but what good is that?)
  - cheald 15y ago
    Sidebar here, but I'm running the Virtuous Inquisition ICS build on my Sensation, and I'm getting like 60 hours of screen-off time on a single charge, and something like 12-14 hours of "out and about" usage. Either Virtuous did something astounding with their build, or something's severely off there.
    - tesseract 15y ago
      I have a GSM/HSPA+ Galaxy Nexus on T-Mobile and battery life is similar to what you describe on the Sensation. A colleague briefly tried the LTE Galaxy Nexus on Verizon and returned it within a week, because the battery life was astoundingly poor as described by dsr_. Conclusion: LTE kills the battery.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
mouly 15y ago
Replacing Menu button with "..." does nothing. The actions will continue to be hidden. All possible actions should be visible. If there are too many actions, then it is a sign to redesign. Creating a bucket for putting misc. actions will make them less discover-able.
michaelhoffman 15y ago
I might have a different perspective as I began using Android with Ice Cream Sandwich. I'm not used to apps having a menu button, and those that have one (or an "overflow" widget) seem much clunkier than those that don't use one. The worst are the ones with some sort of "More" button from within the menu. Sometimes we think what we are used to is easier, when perhaps it is not.
radley 15y ago
They should replace the useless History button with the Options menu button. But then again, Matias doesn't think of Android OS as an app platform, but rather a portable web platform. So they don't think about app menus, they're thinking page navigation.
rkon 15y ago
The dedicated menu button made navigation in every app not only intuitive but consistent. One of the things that absolutely infuriated me about iOS was playing a game of "Find the settings/back/exit/etc. button" in every single app. The best part is realizing the app's developer didn't include the option you're looking for after 10 minutes of searching, which would be obvious if you tapped the menu button once in Android. As a Galaxy Nexus user, it's the one feature of my original Droid that I miss the most. Google's "If it ain't broke, break it" strategy is really getting on my nerves lately.
- pixie_ 15y ago
  It's not consistent because sometimes the hard menu button shows something and sometimes it doesn't, no one knows. It's also not intuitive that feature xyz is accessed by the menu key. The user has to look for feature xyz, get frustrated, and press the hard menu button as the last resort in their annoying search for it.
- divtxt 15y ago
  Off-screen buttons ruin the "touch the app" magic of touchscreen direct interaction. The screen is the app and the app is the screen. Therefore, any button outside the screen is not part of the app! BTW, I used to agree with you but experience changed my mind: I once used an Android timer app for months without pressing the menu button.
spacemanaki 15y ago
Ugh are they really using the market app's home screen as a good example? I think it's such a overly cluttered UI.
pixie_ 15y ago
Good riddance. I hate when I look around how to do something and it was hidden in the menu button the entire time. It was completely unintuitive when there were menu options to use, and when there were not. That's why I designed the android version of my app, like the iPhone version, and put all possible options in the on-screen design itself. It's funny too because other android devs told me 'nooo use the hard buttons' screw that, even the back hard button is unintuitive at times, better to put it all on the touch screen.
- socksy 15y ago
  A badly designed interface will still be hiding desirable features behind an impenetrable "menu" option, only now you have to use the capacitive touch screen in order to reach it. The physical button was at least consistent and easier to press (or at least, on my device). If the menu button is unintuitive, that might be indicative that a redesign has to take place, rather than that the menu button concept is broken. I don't see what advantage this change has?
  - pixie_ 15y ago
    The difference is - when the menu is on the UI then you KNOW there are menu options available. The hard menu concept is broken because hitting the hard menu key is a crap shoot, it might do something, it might not, who knows. The problem is also developers like you think normal users think like them, they don't. Google has obviously figured this out, though pretty late in the game.
lazugod 15y ago
It's impossible to scroll on the linked page using the Kindle Fire browser, a disappointing discovery given that it uses Android.
- __david__ 15y ago
  It's also impossible to scroll on Firefox 9 on a MacBook. Very frustrating.
kizza 15y ago
The biggest mistake here is that it's now impossible to use text to explain what each button means. I'm afraid that with a lot of apps there will be features that do not map to an obvious icon, leaving users with the dreaded old "Mystery Meat" navigation.
BrainInAJar 15y ago
Now if only they could kill the "Do random thing" (back) button as well
- recursive 15y ago
  How do you get it to do a random thing? For me, it goes back.

64 points by cleverjake 15y ago

nextparadigms 15y ago

Is it possible to say goodbye to all the buttons and replace them with UI gestures?

sp332 15y ago
What gesture means "navigate from here to home and avoid tolls"? http://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/gui-programmer.html http://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/gui-programmer.html
aen1 15y ago
Is it possible to go back to phones with physical buttons? When it was obvious where to press, and not a guessing game?
- seltzered_ 15y ago
  There's some advantage with not having physical buttons. Most notably you can quickly "cancel" an intended action with a non-physical button by sliding your finger away from it while holding down. e.g. you're playing a game and accidentally press the home button. slide away to continue playing. You can't do that with a physical button unless they implement something where holding the button down causes a less intrusive action. iOS does this i believe by not exiting the app but bringing up the multitasking menu when you hold down the home button. I currently have a thinkpad tablet with physical buttons, and I'm afraid of using them half the time because of accidentally hitting them.
- the-cakeboss 15y ago
  I don't understand how a gestural interface would become a guessing game any more than physical buttons would be. Regardless whether your interface be gestural or physical certain actions would presumably do different things depending on the current context. Instead of remembering to press a particular button, one would remember a particular gesture. Unless you are talking about guessing whether your gesture was recognized.
radley 15y ago
It's not a matter of gestures insomuch as using the multi-touch screen effectively.

CoffeeDregs 15y ago

I gotta say that this change makes me feel a little funny. I use Android after switching from an iPhone, I like Android and I like the menu button. Further, I understand that there are relatively few ways to do what needs to be done to support application options. Further, further, I understand that Apple and Android have blatantly lifted bits from each other. But isn't this a near pixel-perfect copy of iOS's options buttons? I was kinda happy when iOS stole Android's notifications behavior because I could feel a little superior for using Android. Now they're stolen something else from iOS, I feel a little less superior. And I realize these are big mean companies, but still I can root for one of them...

untog 15y ago
iOS's option buttons? No, not at all. They're a near-pixel perfect copy of Windows Phone's option bars: http://mobileworld.appamundi.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.UserFiles/00.00.00.21.04/PerstSearch.jpg http://mobileworld.appamundi.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__k...
- CoffeeDregs 15y ago
  Ah. By which I meant: http://www.idownloadblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Music-App-iCloud-iOS-5-2.png http://www.idownloadblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Musi... Looks very similar to: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u-3KNfy5n9M/TyG235X2rGI/AAAAAAAABHM/g_qGEXBdJW8/s400/image00.png http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u-3KNfy5n9M/TyG235X2rGI/AAAAAAAABH... and http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KIyVJ4DBLdw/TyGbNsLn4hI/AAAAAAAABFs/xgLPIAaEP6I/s400/image01.png http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KIyVJ4DBLdw/TyGbNsLn4hI/AAAAAAAABF... albeit with orientation or location changes.
  - eelco 15y ago
    That's not an option button on iOS. It leads to a menu of 'secondary' menu items, that are hierarchically on the same level as the other tabs.

rufugee 15y ago

Tell you what...I'm a big Android fan. However, the removal of the menu button and the addition of the "..." action overflow button is the single biggest UX mistake I've seen on Android so far, for a very simple reason...the "..." is too small to easily press, and appears at different (mostly inconvenient) places on the screen. For example, a large part of the time it's on the far right hand side. As a guy who keeps his phone in his left hand most of the time, and who typically operates his phone with one hand, I have to reach across the entire phone with my thumb and hope to hit it. Not so with the menu button...it was easy to hit, and even if I had to reach across, it was easy to "feel" my way to it. I miss it quite a bit.

cheald 15y ago
I absolutely, fully, 100% agree with this. "Hunt the back/options button" drives me nuts on iOS. The ramifications of this are that when options aren't "pretty", they are hard to get to - on iOS, if you want to change Safari settings, you have to exit Safari and go open a separate Settings app to change them. I swear under my breath every time I have to do it. The physical back button is the single most powerful feature Android has over iOS, and the physical menu button isn't far behind. A single, consistent, verb for "give me more things to do with this view" is so much better than "guess which button/graphic/icon on this screen means 'menu', then find out where it is, then press it even though it's only 6px by 6px, because we didn't want it to overwhelm our listview". Maybe a compromise could be reached by either a) adding a visual cue that there are menu actions for the current view, or b) making menu buttons in your app invoke the same menu that pressing the menu button would. I feel like this is trending towards "iOS works with only one button, we should too", and I think it's the wrong step. The search button I could kind of see - it was nice, but rarely used just due to the nature of how mobile apps were built. The menu button? Leave it alone, please. I like it just how it is.
- ugh 15y ago
  But the back button is horrible now that it doubles as an up button. It confused me and that kind of behavior makes it utterly useless. It’s a waste of space.

AndrewDucker 15y ago

I _like_ having physical buttons. I can reach for them and they're right where my muscle memory expects it to be. I'm about to upgrade to the Nexus and I expect to miss the physical back button a lot.

olex 15y ago
Agreed... my Desire is currently almost 2 years old and I'm getting a contract renewal in a month, and I have no idea what phone to get: there are no smartphones with proper hardware buttons on the market anymore, save for a few SE handsets; it's all in useless capacitive buttons now, or none at all since ICS.

gxs 15y ago

Soon they will do away with the back button, the search button, and leave only the home button. Where have I seen this before?

beej71 15y ago
I hope not--the back button really makes it all possible.
- sukuriant 15y ago
  I concur. The back button is the single greatest feature of Android. I do not understand why they're removing the menu button. Personally, I think it's a terrible decision for all the reasons listed here; however, the greatest feature that Android had over iPhone, period, were multitasking and the back button. Both of those features did, and continue to work hand in hand to make it a pleasant experience.

rodh257 15y ago

I liked the menu button because it meant that you always knew where to go to get menu options. On iOS many apps have different symbols and locations for settings and as a daily Android user I've found it annoying searching for them. On ICS it's silly checking down the bottom right (where the software buttons are) and sometimes top right (action bar) for the menu button, and if they are deprecating the bottom right/menu button option I can see it becoming just like iOS. When the action bar concept doesn't fit into the design developers will just have to shove menu options at a random place in their UI. I cannot comprehend how that is a better option than having a soft/hard menu button in the same place all the time.

dsr_ 15y ago
...and what UX "expert" decided that when menu (or action overflow) would appear, sometimes it would be down, sometimes up top, and sometimes (I kid you not) both? It's software: if you're going to display something, be consistent about it! It's the single most annoying thing about ICS. It's more annoying than the 4.5 hour usable battery life on the Galaxy Nexus. (You get 4.5 hours of screen-on time. You can manage close to 20 hours, if you don't actually use the thing, but what good is that?)
- cheald 15y ago
  Sidebar here, but I'm running the Virtuous Inquisition ICS build on my Sensation, and I'm getting like 60 hours of screen-off time on a single charge, and something like 12-14 hours of "out and about" usage. Either Virtuous did something astounding with their build, or something's severely off there.
  - tesseract 15y ago
    I have a GSM/HSPA+ Galaxy Nexus on T-Mobile and battery life is similar to what you describe on the Sensation. A colleague briefly tried the LTE Galaxy Nexus on Verizon and returned it within a week, because the battery life was astoundingly poor as described by dsr_. Conclusion: LTE kills the battery.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

mouly 15y ago

Replacing Menu button with "..." does nothing. The actions will continue to be hidden. All possible actions should be visible. If there are too many actions, then it is a sign to redesign. Creating a bucket for putting misc. actions will make them less discover-able.

michaelhoffman 15y ago

I might have a different perspective as I began using Android with Ice Cream Sandwich. I'm not used to apps having a menu button, and those that have one (or an "overflow" widget) seem much clunkier than those that don't use one. The worst are the ones with some sort of "More" button from within the menu. Sometimes we think what we are used to is easier, when perhaps it is not.

radley 15y ago

They should replace the useless History button with the Options menu button. But then again, Matias doesn't think of Android OS as an app platform, but rather a portable web platform. So they don't think about app menus, they're thinking page navigation.

rkon 15y ago

The dedicated menu button made navigation in every app not only intuitive but consistent. One of the things that absolutely infuriated me about iOS was playing a game of "Find the settings/back/exit/etc. button" in every single app. The best part is realizing the app's developer didn't include the option you're looking for after 10 minutes of searching, which would be obvious if you tapped the menu button once in Android. As a Galaxy Nexus user, it's the one feature of my original Droid that I miss the most. Google's "If it ain't broke, break it" strategy is really getting on my nerves lately.

pixie_ 15y ago
It's not consistent because sometimes the hard menu button shows something and sometimes it doesn't, no one knows. It's also not intuitive that feature xyz is accessed by the menu key. The user has to look for feature xyz, get frustrated, and press the hard menu button as the last resort in their annoying search for it.
divtxt 15y ago
Off-screen buttons ruin the "touch the app" magic of touchscreen direct interaction. The screen is the app and the app is the screen. Therefore, any button outside the screen is not part of the app! BTW, I used to agree with you but experience changed my mind: I once used an Android timer app for months without pressing the menu button.

spacemanaki 15y ago

Ugh are they really using the market app's home screen as a good example? I think it's such a overly cluttered UI.

pixie_ 15y ago

Good riddance. I hate when I look around how to do something and it was hidden in the menu button the entire time. It was completely unintuitive when there were menu options to use, and when there were not. That's why I designed the android version of my app, like the iPhone version, and put all possible options in the on-screen design itself. It's funny too because other android devs told me 'nooo use the hard buttons' screw that, even the back hard button is unintuitive at times, better to put it all on the touch screen.

socksy 15y ago
A badly designed interface will still be hiding desirable features behind an impenetrable "menu" option, only now you have to use the capacitive touch screen in order to reach it. The physical button was at least consistent and easier to press (or at least, on my device). If the menu button is unintuitive, that might be indicative that a redesign has to take place, rather than that the menu button concept is broken. I don't see what advantage this change has?
- pixie_ 15y ago
  The difference is - when the menu is on the UI then you KNOW there are menu options available. The hard menu concept is broken because hitting the hard menu key is a crap shoot, it might do something, it might not, who knows. The problem is also developers like you think normal users think like them, they don't. Google has obviously figured this out, though pretty late in the game.

lazugod 15y ago

It's impossible to scroll on the linked page using the Kindle Fire browser, a disappointing discovery given that it uses Android.

__david__ 15y ago
It's also impossible to scroll on Firefox 9 on a MacBook. Very frustrating.

kizza 15y ago

The biggest mistake here is that it's now impossible to use text to explain what each button means. I'm afraid that with a lot of apps there will be features that do not map to an obvious icon, leaving users with the dreaded old "Mystery Meat" navigation.

BrainInAJar 15y ago

Now if only they could kill the "Do random thing" (back) button as well

recursive 15y ago
How do you get it to do a random thing? For me, it goes back.