My kids and I love playing games on our various iOS and Android tablets. One thing that bothers everyone though is the full-screen experience when dealing with soft or "semi-soft" keys on Android. I'm getting ready to deal with this issue myself in my own application development, so I though I'd solicit advice on the best way to deal with it.
In a nutshell, the problem stems from accidentally hitting the home key. As one plays a game, wildly moving fingers around on the screen, commonly the home key is accidentally pressed which exits the game. If you want a good example of this, play Fruit Ninja on a Galaxy Tab. With physical buttons this isn't usually an issue (e.g., iPad, and some Android devices), but for those that have soft keys and soft menus it can be really annoying. It seems like things are getting worse with Honeycomb and beyond, too, as device manufacturers move more towards an all-soft platform. I know all of the requirements that Android places on devices (and with good reason) for keeping the home button's semantics clean. But it really does compromise the platform for many gaming scenarios in a particularly annoying way. How are other game devs dealing with this? As for what I would LIKE to see, I think a good compromise would be the ability for a game to make it "harder" for the home key to exit the app. For example, games could request a permission that, if granted, would require the user to hold the home key down longer, or press three times within 3 second, or something along those lines. This would still always allow a user to exit the app, but would eliminate the spurious home key presses. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
