I've always found the result of pressing the Back key to be ambiguous at best. In what I think was the original concept of Android apps, the idea was that it would take you "back" to an earlier app in the stack of active apps in a logical way. For example, my app displays the names of locations where an event took place; tap on it and an Intent is fired that brings up Google Maps to display it on a map; press Back and you return to my app. Makes sense.
But many if not most apps are more of the "standalone" variety where the only thing to go back to is the launcher, but the Back key is used internally to navigate to earlier views or levels of detail. I know that when I use news or weather apps, I'm often left staring at the launcher screen when I thought that pressing Back would return me to an earlier view or the article I was previously reading, etc. In fact, when using *my own app* I occasionally accidentally "exit" it by pressing the Back key when I'm already at the main view of the data! I originally didn't allow an exit with the Back key, forcing users to use the Home button, but after a couple of users took me to task about it I went back to the standard behavior. I've noticed a few apps that pop up a "Are you sure you want to exit" dialog in this situation, but that seems messy too. I really wish there were a better-defined way to handle this. -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
