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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 mis

by 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.
  - olex 15y ago
    Yes. Too sad seeing Google step away from many great UX concepts that Android started out with, instead of further building up on them.
  - fpgeek 15y ago
    When done correctly, there's a separate up button and back doesn't double as up. There is confusion because when you are drilling down into an app "back" and "up" are the same place. Even worse, I suspect that confusion is why developers often get back/up handling wrong.
    - ugh 15y ago
      Hm, but then even Google’s stock apps get it wrong. I was using a factory fresh Galaxy Nexus. Maybe we are talking about something different? What I mean is that sometimes, the back button does something different than taking you back to the last screen you were on.
      - fpgeek 15y ago
        Sadly, not even Google's apps do this correctly all of the time. Google Voice is a particularly dreadful offender. If you click on a Google Voice notification, "back" doesn't take you "back" and it doesn't take you "up". AFAICT, it takes you "back within the app", which is often crazy. Here's the scenario I just tried: 1. I was in Google Voice talking to person A. 2. I left Google Voice and was in another app X. 3. A text arrives from person B and I get a notification from Google Voice. 4. I click on the notification and go to my conversation with person B in Google Voice. 5. I hit "back". It didn't go back to app X (the Right Thing). It didn't go to my conversation list in Google Voice (the more common wrong thing). Instead, Google Voice, of course, goes to my conversation with person A! I can only hope that one of the reasons the Android team published their design guidelines was to publicly shame the developers of substandard Google apps for Android.
ugh 15y ago
Yeah, that’s because it’s deprecated. It’s supposed to go away. Good riddance.
- rufugee 15y ago
  Are you saying the "..." actions overflow button is supposed to go away? Because if you're not, your comment makes no sense in the context of mine.
  - ugh 15y ago
    It’s a legacy feature. It will go away.
    - olex 15y ago
      And where will you put your user actions then, that belonged in the menu before? Invent a million inconsistent ways to stuff more things in the Action Bar or display some menus elsewhere in the UI? Sorry, but I liked the consistent hardware-button-activated menu much better for this purpose.
      - ugh 15y ago
        In the appropriate and logical places. The menu button was a massive mess, idiotic from the beginning.
        ajoshi 15y ago
        Can you explain what you didn't like about it? As a user, I found it to be dead simple to use, and as a developer, I had no problems working with it either. Removing the menu button sounds like adding friction to me. Opening the options menu for every app is the same button press. You can do it with your eyes closed. Also, doesn't the action bar just take up precious screen real estate? For something that users will only occasionally interact with, that doesn't seem like a good use of a limited resource.

by rufugee 15y ago

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.
- olex 15y ago
  Yes. Too sad seeing Google step away from many great UX concepts that Android started out with, instead of further building up on them.
- fpgeek 15y ago
  When done correctly, there's a separate up button and back doesn't double as up. There is confusion because when you are drilling down into an app "back" and "up" are the same place. Even worse, I suspect that confusion is why developers often get back/up handling wrong.
  - ugh 15y ago
    Hm, but then even Google’s stock apps get it wrong. I was using a factory fresh Galaxy Nexus. Maybe we are talking about something different? What I mean is that sometimes, the back button does something different than taking you back to the last screen you were on.
    - fpgeek 15y ago
      Sadly, not even Google's apps do this correctly all of the time. Google Voice is a particularly dreadful offender. If you click on a Google Voice notification, "back" doesn't take you "back" and it doesn't take you "up". AFAICT, it takes you "back within the app", which is often crazy. Here's the scenario I just tried: 1. I was in Google Voice talking to person A. 2. I left Google Voice and was in another app X. 3. A text arrives from person B and I get a notification from Google Voice. 4. I click on the notification and go to my conversation with person B in Google Voice. 5. I hit "back". It didn't go back to app X (the Right Thing). It didn't go to my conversation list in Google Voice (the more common wrong thing). Instead, Google Voice, of course, goes to my conversation with person A! I can only hope that one of the reasons the Android team published their design guidelines was to publicly shame the developers of substandard Google apps for Android.

ugh 15y ago

Yeah, that’s because it’s deprecated. It’s supposed to go away. Good riddance.

rufugee 15y ago
Are you saying the "..." actions overflow button is supposed to go away? Because if you're not, your comment makes no sense in the context of mine.
- ugh 15y ago
  It’s a legacy feature. It will go away.
  - olex 15y ago
    And where will you put your user actions then, that belonged in the menu before? Invent a million inconsistent ways to stuff more things in the Action Bar or display some menus elsewhere in the UI? Sorry, but I liked the consistent hardware-button-activated menu much better for this purpose.
    - ugh 15y ago
      In the appropriate and logical places. The menu button was a massive mess, idiotic from the beginning.
      - ajoshi 15y ago
        Can you explain what you didn't like about it? As a user, I found it to be dead simple to use, and as a developer, I had no problems working with it either. Removing the menu button sounds like adding friction to me. Opening the options menu for every app is the same button press. You can do it with your eyes closed. Also, doesn't the action bar just take up precious screen real estate? For something that users will only occasionally interact with, that doesn't seem like a good use of a limited resource.