26.10.2010 14:03, mort пишет:
On 25 Okt., 20:18, Kostya Vasilyev<kmans...@gmail.com> wrote:
[ snip ]
Educating users is better than implementing kludges that users wish on a
whim.
... but I think it's a sign of a not user friendly design if you have
to explain common users what's going on in the system depths.
Any new thing needs explaining. There was a time when computers had no
mice, there was a time when there was no multitasking of any kind (I
mean desktop computers), there is this thing called home networking,
etc. etc. etc.
If users need to read long explanations about what the task manager
shows, what's the difference between Back and Home
This is driven by the interaction pattern.
Typically, if I start Gmail or messaging to read a new message, I leave
it by pressing Back to return to whatever I was doing when the message
arrived.
If I pick up the phone to send a message, then I typically exit Gmail /
messaging by pressing Home.
I really don't care about what happens in the depths of Android - what I
do care about is either resuming whatever I was doing, or "resetting" to
Home if I wasn't doing anything.
As for explanations about what the task manager shows - well, run Task
Manager on Windows and click "Display all processes". Then look at the
list contents. What's "lsm.exe" ? How about "WUDFHost.exe" ?
Same with my FreeBSD-based router - if I do "ps aux", there are lots of
things I know nothing about.
I don't know and I don't care - it works, why should I worry about this?
, and still don't
know whether the "closed" app will do something in background or not,
there *is* something going wrong. I just hope future Android versions
will address those issues, because it's not only a problem of nasty
mails. It ranges from undesired 1-star-ratings ("stays in background
and spys at me! don't install that bullsh*t!" even if there isn't a
service at all)
Yes, some commends are entirely nonsensical. Some people are not too
bright, some people are angry at everything, some people are paranoid.
But - Android is not FDA approved for the treatment of paranoia and
schizophrenia :)
to dismissing the entire system as slow, battery
consuming, and hard to use.
Re: Twitter - this should be controllable by the user. I can think of a
nice away to handle this in the UI, so it must not be that hard.
Really? Which one? Do users have to go to the preferences each time
they want a different behaviour? Do they have to answer a nasty query
when the app's left with "back"? Do they have to look for a checkbox
"[ ] no updates in background" on the main screen?
A prompt when exiting the application is definitely a bad thing, and I'm
saying this as a user.
A preference setting would work for me, as would a status bar icon for
while there are background updates.
Also, speaking as a user, I'd like to see separate settings for WiFi and
cellular data connections.
Also, keep in mind most users wont differ between Back and Home, so
onFinalize() wouldn't be a good place, but also onPause() might cause
troubles because it's invoked when a sub activity or the lock screen
becomes visible.
Sorry, I don't think any of those ways is nearly as intuitive as the
"minimized" (or tray icon) vs. "closed" difference users are used to
by any desktop system. And it's different in each app, if possible at
all.
Besides, non of the Twitter apps I've seen so far offers anything but
a general update interval option in the preferences. And Twitter's
only an example.
Ah.
So the issue is with applications.
What you're saying is that all the Twitter clients assume that twitting
is the main / only thing that the user does. That's hardly a good
assumption.
[ snip ]
- Users realize that it's ok to just let Android do its thing, because
it just works.
Only as long as the apps don't do anything in background (no matter if
by service, broadcasts, AlarmManager, ...). If there wasn't a problem
with that, there wouldn't be so many users which are using task
managers because they actually do improve performance and/or battery
usage.
There were, and perhaps still are, poorly written Android applications.
Hopefully, as time goes on, applications get better, and there is more
diversity, so one is not forced to use poor applications.
I admit that once my home screen widget had code to update every 5
seconds - it was the only way I could think of to make it do what I
wanted. Since then my knowledge of the platform improved, and my widget
doesn't do this anymore.
Perhaps many developers on this can relate to this, and can honestly say
that as time went on, they were able to improve their applications.
So there was a technical need for task killers for a time, but it's
gradually going away.
But more than that, I'm convinced task killers fill a psychological need
of many users to "control" what goes on "inside" the OS.
It's the same as with various "performance tuning" utilities for
Windows. Or utilities that make Windows XP look like Vista or Mac
OS/Aqua, often causing slowdowns and instability as a side effect.
If it was possible to affect Linux processes on an Android phone,
there'd be "process killers".
People for some reason like using these things, and it's the same with
task killers. But that has nothing to do with technology, and everything
with psychology. There is really no technical solution to this.
--
Kostya Vasilyev -- WiFi Manager + pretty widget -- http://kmansoft.wordpress.com
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