Hey, That's an interesting article - I can definitely see the menu button changing standard user behaviors and the interactions they come to expect. I'd definitely agree that the context menu is a strong point of the platform. It took me a few weeks to get comfortable with the back button, so I can empathize with the article quite a bit.
I think it's still hard to draw a line between onscreen and contextual actions, though. I feel like a user should be able to get basic functionality from an app without using contextual menus and I think the most important actions should be immediately obvious. Every action in a contextual menu also requires two interactions instead of one, so it makes sense to put more common actions on the screen -- just for speed-of-use. I think the contextual menus are a great way to pack more functionality into an app, especially when some features are extra and often unnecessary. Sometimes on the iPhone, you can't add features for lack of button space -- and the menu overcomes that problem beautifully. But is it really intended to contain all the actions of the activity? I feel like there should still be a standard for on- screen buttons... - Ben On Jan 9, 8:13 pm, Mark Murphy <[email protected]> wrote: > Yves Glodt wrote: > > About the +-button: Do not forget on Android you have a menu. (kind of a > > "context-menu") > > > So, create a menu and include an "Add"-button in that menu. So you can > > do with "settings", "reload" without using space on the touchscreen. > > The menu just appears when needed. > > > The menu (or context-menu if you prefer) is one of the strong points of > > the android platform. > > Echoing the concept: > > http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/09/android-iphone-switch/ > > -- > Mark Murphy (a Commons > Guy)http://commonsware.com|http://twitter.com/commonsguy > > Android App Developer Training:http://commonsware.com/training
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