I would like to highlight mort's point. As you may be aware, the iPhone recently was upgraded to have some similar facilities. And I am continually annoyed by it. On balance, it is a clear advance -- yet I have no way of knowing when I switch applications, just what is happening to the old one.
*Usually* it doesn't matter. But sometimes, I really do care if that application is still active. It may be something that might incur usage charges, or something that has sensitive data, or it might be something that consumes significant resources if it IS still active. The fact that an application COULD still be active is a problem even for those applications which are quite well-behaved, because I JUST DO NOT KNOW. It's not that the functionality here is bad. It's not. I love it, and am very happy to have it (finally) on my iPhone (and, as an Android developer, sad that that huge competitive advantage is lessened :=). But on both platforms, there is a real problem with visibility of what's going on when you switch tasks. Of course, visibility is always even more of an issue on small screens. But some sort of indication of an application's degree of activity in every context in which it is visible would help. One thing would be to let an application flag that it has no need to run when not in the foreground. This would then be enforced by the system, and communicated to the user in some suitable fashion, perhaps branding the icon with an orange PAUSED stamp, say. Applications which do NOT have this should not be made into pariahs, perhaps they should get some big indication of how much they are consuming, and ones which are expensive, would be branded as RUNNING. This would need to be consistently presented -- especially on the long- home screen. And some serious effort would be needed to communicate this information to the user. But being visible, it would be much easier to present, and it would also make life easier for us developers who end up explaining it to users. In part, this is a marketing failure. In most cases, this is presenting the user with a clear advantage, including a performance advantage. But users are unaware of it. It used to be a clear difference in considering Android over iPhone -- which I used to tag as being for people who only ever do one thing at a time. On Oct 26, 3:03 am, mort <[email protected]> wrote: > ... 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. > If users need to read long explanations about what the task manager > shows, what's the difference between Back and Home, 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) to dismissing the entire system as slow, battery > consuming, and hard to use. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
