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"Solving the inconsistencies grouped around the back button" Android's back button used to be incredibly inconsistent and hard to predict, but now there's a fa

"Solving the inconsistencies grouped around the back button" Android's back button used to be incredibly inconsistent and hard to predict, but now there's a fairly well established standard for this, which is supported by the API (http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/navigation.html http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/navigation.html). There was even a full-length Google IO session on it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwGHJJYBs0Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwGHJJYBs0Q). It doesn't mean all apps follow the standard, especially those naievely ported from iOS. Even some Google apps don't always meet expectations. But the convention is mostly there now and just needs more adoption.

king_jester 14y ago
The main issue with the back button is that devs love to mess around with how it works by default, usually to satisfy some kind of architecture that doesn't make sense in the first place on an Android device. From what I've seen of people's Android code, a lot of folks don't grok the Activity and Fragments APIs at first and end up making huge mistakes or creating excessive architectures to try and 'solve' the problem. Unfortunately, this is a kind of chicken and egg problem, since a lot of Android apps are done by hobbyists who need time and practice to get up to speed or by commercial companies that don't care for or don't have any idea on how their product should work on Android.
chimeracoder 14y ago
> It doesn't mean all apps follow the standard, especially those naievely ported from iOS. Agreed. Amusingly, the only apps that I ever complain about (whether for the back button or for general styling and functionality) are the ones that are clearly half-baked ports of iOS apps. No wonder it looks terrible and doesn't seem to work properly - you're following all the best practices for the wrong operating system!

king_jester 14y ago

The main issue with the back button is that devs love to mess around with how it works by default, usually to satisfy some kind of architecture that doesn't make sense in the first place on an Android device. From what I've seen of people's Android code, a lot of folks don't grok the Activity and Fragments APIs at first and end up making huge mistakes or creating excessive architectures to try and 'solve' the problem. Unfortunately, this is a kind of chicken and egg problem, since a lot of Android apps are done by hobbyists who need time and practice to get up to speed or by commercial companies that don't care for or don't have any idea on how their product should work on Android.

chimeracoder 14y ago

> It doesn't mean all apps follow the standard, especially those naievely ported from iOS. Agreed. Amusingly, the only apps that I ever complain about (whether for the back button or for general styling and functionality) are the ones that are clearly half-baked ports of iOS apps. No wonder it looks terrible and doesn't seem to work properly - you're following all the best practices for the wrong operating system!