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On the other hand Android allows nonsensical sharing options - there's no way to launch the email app, you have launch a ACTION_SEND_MULTIPLE which will launch
by richardwhiuk 14y ago
On the other hand Android allows nonsensical sharing options - there's no way to launch the email app, you have launch a ACTION_SEND_MULTIPLE which will launch Skype, or GMail or Mail or various IM apps.
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoAnd why should the developer have to care if I want to send something via Gmail, Skype, or carrier pigeon? As long as Android abstracts the data properly within the Intent, the target app should be irrelevant.
- jsight 14y agoThat's true, but the Android approach for accomplishing it is kind of horrible. For one, far too many apps respond to message types that don't really make sense to me. I don't know that this problem is avoidable with freedom, but the lists of available apps for any particular action are often long and very confusing. I have witnessed this confusion with users, and it really hurts the platform in a lot of cases, IMO. I can select one to be the default "always", but this doesn't work well either. If there are five applications that can receive a particular intent, my selection of "always" will be lost every single time that ANY of those five applications are updated. So, in practice, my "Always" selection typically only lasts a couple of weeks. There HAS to be a better way.
- myko 14y agoI'm not sure you're correct here. A developer can specify a particular package to launch Gmail or the stock mail app, something like: Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW); intent.setPackage("com.adobe.reader"); Would open the adobe pdf reader for instance. That said this is hardly desirable from a users perspective.