Frankly, I think that the way the Back button works to go both back to a previous state of an app and to "exit" the app gets pretty frustrating, even for me as an experienced user. One of the original concepts of apps was having mostly mini-apps that can call on each other to do specific work. For example, my app displays location information, and if the user taps on it, I toss a *geo:* intent out there and they can see the location on Google Maps or Earth or whatever. In this case, it makes perfect sense to then use the Back button to go back to my app and continue from there.
However, most complex apps also need to use the Back button when displaying their own detail information. Again, my app allows the user to drill down into increasing detail in their database, which I do by launching intents or stacked fragments. They then get back to the basic app view by using the Back button. But if they press Back once too often -- which even I do myself occasionally -- then Boom!, they're back at the launcher. I have the same issue when using things like news or weather apps. It's not always obvious if I can get back from an article or sub-category by pressing Back or if there's some other way, and I often find myself staring at the launcher screen when I really just wanted to go *back *to the "headlines" or whatever. Annoying! I've noticed that some apps try to "solve" this by posting a dialog saying "Do you really want to exit?", and another one I've been using lately displays a toast message saying "Press Back again to exit". So apparently a number of other people are encountering these issues and complaining. On Sunday, March 3, 2013 3:21:29 PM UTC-5, jtoolsdev wrote: > > On 03/03/2013 09:02 AM, Michael Elsd�rfer wrote: > > The back button is not an exit button, and developers should not be > telling > > users that it is. If it were an exit button, it would be called exit. > There > > is no exit functionality in Android, for better of worse that is the way > > Android was designed, and that is the constraints you need to work in. > > > > "There is no such thing as "closing the application" or "auto exiting > > the app" in the android application model." > > > > > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/android-developers/TBuJVev9V5k/ECXrVT8NF5IJ > > > > We had quite a religious argument over this a while back. Some apps DO > have an exit button. There also some apps that you have to hit the back > button multiple times to exit. My apps have only a two layer hierarchy > and even then I am thinking of flattening it to one layer. It really > depends on what your app does and how irritated you want your user to be > if they want to completely get out of your app. > > Also that link is from 2008 and things have changed a bit as they > already encouraged changing layouts because users often don't know about > menus. > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
