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éléments par Russell Holly

BetaNews.Com

• 

  Google's new Tablet App Quality Checklist should be mandatory

  Publié: octobre 10, 2012, 7:10pm CEST par Russell Holly

  

  My only real complaint with the Nexus 7 is the way apps are displayed. Many times developers have not compensated for a screen larger than 4 inches, and the resulting app looks terrible. Nexus 7 does a decent job of covering this up in some places due to the size of the screen, but when you come across an app that has clearly been designed for many screen sizes, you notice the difference.

  Google encourages developers to design their apps to suit the operating system instead of the screen size through a variety of mechanisms, the most recent being a checklist to ensure higher quality design practices are being used when developing apps. In my opinion, this checklist should be much more than a friendly suggestion.

  The majority of the items on the checklist are common-sense -- things like making sure your icons and notifications are the correct size so they look good on any screen, or ensuring you don't have lines of text that stretch across the entire device when in landscape orientation. Don't enable support for hardware that isn't needed, like making phone calls and GPS. For the most part, these are things that would come up in quality control if the app was being designed and tested by anyone using Android since version 3.0. Google's "fragments" UI system has been designed to adjust the flow of an app to look nice in a variety of situations.

  By far the most useful part of the checklist comes near the end, with the best practices for publishing an app to Google Play. Discovery is a problem for many apps in the store, and the guidelines are thorough for how to make them searchable and offer tips on how to better target tablet consumers.

  The biggest suggestion is to not upload a phone version and a tablet version of an app, but rather to offer a single one with optimizations that function in both environments. Two apps with largely overlapping functions cause rankings per single unit to go down, since all downloads and purchases are separate.

  At the end of the day, the biggest reason that every app developer doesn't follow the suggestions is fragmentation. The majority of Android users are still using some version of 2.3, which was never designed for tablets. The Android versions that support tablet sizing are just over 25 percent of devices accessing Google Play, and not all of them are tablets. The need to optimize for tablets has been incredibly low from the perspective of developers who optimize for the greatest number of Android users. Unfortunately, the early adopters and users of Android 3.0 and higher are stuck with the result.

  Google is unlikely to enforce these design issues, due largely to the open nature of Android app development. These suggestions are being heavily encouraged through the Android Developers page on Google+, which includes Hangouts like the App Clinic where apps are critiqued for design and best practices. Google is clearly doing everything it can in order to move the ecosystem forward without forcing anyone's hand. It's not going to be a guaranteed fix for every app, but it is more than a step in the right direction.

  
• 

  When will multi-platform users escape digital content hell?

  Publié: septembre 24, 2012, 4:54pm CEST par Russell Holly

  I'm not locked in to any one company's ecosystem right now. I have a Windows 7 Ultrabook, a desktop I built myself running Mint Linux, an iPad, and my trusty Galaxy Nexus. Each appliance serves the purpose I purchased it for very well, and I feel no need to switch away from any of them for the moment. When I perform basic daily tasks, things run smoothly. I use Dropbox and Google Drive for sharing much of my content back and forth, and it's a great experience.

  When it comes to purchasing digital content like music, movies, or books, it feels like I am punished for not being locked in to any one content system.

  Apple

  The first ecosystem I gave up on was Apple's. Unless you live in an all Apple all the time world, iTunes is a pain. The content is only available for streaming if you have an Apple device, and the idea that I would download and store my entire music library on every device individually is hilarious but wrong. There's an appeal to shopping with iTunes, which routinely has some of the best deals, and the music library is vastly larger than competing stores. Movies aren't quite so appealing, especially when I can't just stream my purchases on whatever device I choose. So, for the most part, it makes very little sense for me to participate in Apple's ecosystem.

  Google

  Google's digital content system is brilliant. Google Music is fantastic, and the uploader service makes it effortless for me to port content from one service to another. As long as I am alright giving up one more piece of my digital existence to Google, things look pretty bright on the surface. Unfortunately, much like Google Drive, the uploader doesn't work in Linux at all. Once you start really using the service, things take a turn for the ugly. Content is often more expensive, and Google is oddly selective about where that content is available. I can purchase a movie using the Google Play Store, and watch it on nearly anything, but the content selection is lacking. I routinely have to go elsewhere for the content I actually want. For now, Google's content library just isn't enough to use regularly.

  Amazon

  Amazon seems like a real winner at first. There's a cloud service that is functionally similar to Google's, but costs an extra $25 every year to use if you have more than 250 songs. The music library is better than Google's, but still not as good as Apple's. If you are an Amazon Prime customer, you have access to mountains of free digital content alongside a fantastic video rental and purchase library. Unfortunately, due to Amazon's need to wrest control from Google for their Kindle Fire, the video service is only available on Apple and Amazon products. At the end of the day, Amazon is more interested in securing market share than they are providing a service to those who used Instant Video before the Kindle Fire even existed.

  Microsoft

  It feels like this is going to get worse before it gets better. With Windows 8  and Windows Phone 8 on the way, Microsoft is going to throw its weight behind the digital content services built around Xbox Live. Whether or not Microsoft will do anything to block any of these services in Windows 8 has yet to be seen, just as there's no way of knowing if Amazon or Google will support Windows Phone or Windows RT devices with their content.

  Tough Luck

  The only way to have a complete experience right now is to juggle. I can purchase music on iTunes and download it to a folder that Google Music automatically syncs everywhere. I can buy a movie on Google Play and watch it on everything but the iPad, or buy from Amazon and watch on everything but my phone.

  There's no technical reason that their services are not available on every device. Users are denied content in order to help sell a lock-in ecosystem so that the seller can be the only place you spend your money. While I know that my situation is much more diverse than many, I think these kinds of disconnects affect a significant percentage of the digital community.

  It feels like Google is the closest to offering the most universal service, but for now the only thing consumers can do is sit ant wait, hoping that eventually someone will remember that screwing the customer into doing things your way isn't the best approach.

  Photo Credit: Liv friis-larsen/Shutterstock

  
• 

  Nexus 7 is confusing

  Publié: août 21, 2012, 11:14pm CEST par Russell Holly

  

  I must preface by clearly stating that I absolutely love my Nexus 7. I recommended it to dozens of people, and fully plan to hand out a few as birthday gifts before the year is over. The tablet is incredibly solid, and worth every penny of the $200 selling price. As far as hardware is concerned, Nexus 7 is remarkable in nearly every aspect.

  That said, Google’s approach to Android 4.1 on this device leaves me with a sense of practiced uncertainty and no clue where the tablet fits into the Android ecosystem.

  Three's a Crowd

  Let's look at Android 4.1 as it exists across Google’s three reference devices. When just Galaxy Nexus and Motorola XOOM, the user interface offered two wildly different navigational instances. You had the drawer interface on devices smaller than 5 inches and the corner interface on devices that are larger. Nexus 7 brings a third design instance with entirely different rules, but with an interface that leans more towards the drawer style.

  It’s not for nothing either; I much prefer the drawer style on the Nexus 7 than I do the larger interface. I think most people would prefer this design if given the choice, even if it often makes the tablet feel like a large phone.

  So we’ve identified a mostly phone-like interface on Nexus 7, and it’s enjoyable. The apps that Google releases for the operating system, however, didn’t get the memo. In fact, they almost all use the larger interface. Compare Chrome on Nexus 7 to Galaxy Nexus. On the phone version of the app, you get some really terrific usability features, like the ability to tilt your phone up or down to scroll across the tabs you have open. You can’t do this on Nexus 7, because Chrome lays out like the tablet version of the app. Tabs line up like you would see them on your computer, but they stack up on top of each other when three or more are open in landscape mode.

  This confusing experience is reflected in other app categories as well. You don’t see these problems with games, rather with information delivery apps. For example, Twitter apps for the Nexus 7 are in a state of disarray. It feels like no one's quite sure which design guide to follow. As such, most of the apps wind up being laid out as though they're on a massive phone, while the others cram their implementation of the larger interface onto the 7-inch screen. On my phone, there are many decent Twitter apps, but on Nexus 7 I find almost all of them are tedious and awkward, comparatively.

  No Middle Ground

  In time, Google hopes that this is an issue that will simply go away. As more users move to the latest versions of Android, more developers will move to the new design guidelines that Google promotes. Will that really solve these inconsistencies? Their “fragments” UI guidelines allow developers to build apps that will work within all three reference devices, but as Google has demonstrated that means your Nexus 7 apps will work as though you are on a small tablet, not a large phone. It doesn’t feel like there’s really a middle ground, even though the OS itself is clearly optimized for the different screen size.

  It’s easy to look at these inconsistencies and think nothing of them. For the most part, in this one particular device, it’s a non-issue. The average citizen probably won’t even know that something is off. As someone soaked in the stuff, someone who looks at these devices all day, every day, it’s clear to me that there’s a small design curiosity that will only get larger with time.

  Nexus 7 is off to a strong start, with the 16GB selling so well it's perpetually delayed. It's entirely possible that the tablet is the most successful Nexus device to date (IDC and other analyst firms aren't expected to release shipments until after third quarter ends). Other manufacturers likely will borrow from the Nexus 7 recipe -- as they should for devices Google releases as reference designs. More 7-inch tablets will become available, and each of the manufacturers will have to choose between copying Google, or going their own way (as Samsung so clearly does with Galaxy Tab).

  

  Considering how many other manufacturers are already making their own variants of the Android UI, I don’t think it will go Google’s way for very long. When the time comes to pull bits and pieces from Nexus 7 and apply the recipe to other devices, manufacturers will take the user interface into heavy consideration.

  Maybe the answer is to allow users to choose an interface for their apps. Maybe users should be able to flip a switch and turn the Nexus 7 UI into the larger format, like so many Android hackers attempt right now. There’s not really a clear path, since there really are two options here. If given the choice, most users will stick with whatever default they are given anyway. Google has clearly made two different interfaces though, and Nexus 7 sits awkwardly in-between them, not really belonging in either.