Google I/O 2012 is over. There's a lot of new information to go through and sessions to watch. Google took Android to a new level and brought Android tablets with. Looking at the announcements including the new hardware Google is finally making Android tablets relevant for the large audience. While ICS tablets like the Asus Transformer series have been great even before they have been suffering from perception that there are no tablet ready apps available for them. Android tablets, while technically great, have suffered from the old chicken and egg problem: not enough tablets sold so devs didn't always feel that they should invest building responsive and scalable UI and buyers didn't feel that they should buy the hardware due to the lack of apps. It think that what we saw in the I/O conference is now going to change that.
One of the greatest new features is activity templates. We've been promised to see more of them in the future but already the ADT has couple of very interesting ones. When creating a new Android project you can make the tool to generate a ready template for your app which automatically adapts to smaller and larger screens using fragments and responsive design approach. This makes it much easier for developers to get started with responsive approach in their apps and build the tablet UI.
Here are example screenshots from the generated app. Note that I haven't done a single line of programming for this example. This was generated by the tool. The app shows a side by side split view on a tablet but shows two different activities on smartphones.
You should definitely take a look and play around with the activity templates. They are good examples of best practices and patterns.
Google's apps
I know that automatic filtering is not possible as Android apps work on tablets regardless of the UI scalability. There are things that Google could do to improve this situation. If developers who invest the time and money to design and build a scalable UI would get more visibility in the Google Play there would be more benefits for doing it. At least I'd hope that the "Staff Picks for Tablets" section would only contain apps that have a great tablet UI (which is not the case now).
Just a "featured" section is not enough. When I'm searching for Twitter client on my tablet the first result is the official twitter app that is nearly unusable on tablets. There are twitter apps that are good on tablets but how do I find them? Am I supposed to try them all? No. I think the tablet apps should be on top of the search.
How could this be done as automatic filtering can't be done based on the manifest file. I think that the best option would be to let developers tell the system whether or not their app is tablet ready or not. I believe we could trust developers to be honest as abuse of the system would very likely lead to bad reviews and getting bad ranking in the Google Play. The Google Play client could then prioritize tablet ready apps when user is searching for apps on tablets or show a badge, not unlike the top developer badge, for apps that are tablet ready.
Anyways, Android tablets just became very relevant. You should make sure that your apps have a tablet UI on 7" tabs as well as on the larger ones. I should do that too. My own app doesn't have a tablet UI but it will soon.
Nexus 7
Nexus 7 is the new Nexus tablet built by Asus and designed in cooperation with Google's designers. The tablet is being sold at a very low price point of $200. It's also not limited to the US and will most likely make its way to all over the world soon(ish). The tablet is getting great reviews in tech blogs which probably has a positive affect on sales. We finally have a Android tablet that is going to sell well.
Developer Tools
The hardware is one part of the puzzle and software is the other. Google released a new version of their ADT Eclipse plugin. The ADT 20 has a lot of improvements (see the I/O session video) but one big theme is support for multiple screen sizes.One of the greatest new features is activity templates. We've been promised to see more of them in the future but already the ADT has couple of very interesting ones. When creating a new Android project you can make the tool to generate a ready template for your app which automatically adapts to smaller and larger screens using fragments and responsive design approach. This makes it much easier for developers to get started with responsive approach in their apps and build the tablet UI.
Here are example screenshots from the generated app. Note that I haven't done a single line of programming for this example. This was generated by the tool. The app shows a side by side split view on a tablet but shows two different activities on smartphones.
You should definitely take a look and play around with the activity templates. They are good examples of best practices and patterns.
Google's apps
One thing that Google has been criticised for is the lack of tablet UI in their own apps, especially in Google+ app. In the IO they finally announced a tablet design to the Google+ app and updates to many other apps. They are now leading by example. Next step: an awesome offline capable office suite for Google Docs please.
Missing link, app discovery
One think I still find to be lacking is app discoverability on tablets. The Google Play has thousands of apps and most of them do not scale nicely to larger screens. But there are apps that do. Many of them! Finding them is painful though. You cannot know if the app is tablet ready or not before installing it unless the developer has included tablet screenshots of it.I know that automatic filtering is not possible as Android apps work on tablets regardless of the UI scalability. There are things that Google could do to improve this situation. If developers who invest the time and money to design and build a scalable UI would get more visibility in the Google Play there would be more benefits for doing it. At least I'd hope that the "Staff Picks for Tablets" section would only contain apps that have a great tablet UI (which is not the case now).
Just a "featured" section is not enough. When I'm searching for Twitter client on my tablet the first result is the official twitter app that is nearly unusable on tablets. There are twitter apps that are good on tablets but how do I find them? Am I supposed to try them all? No. I think the tablet apps should be on top of the search.
How could this be done as automatic filtering can't be done based on the manifest file. I think that the best option would be to let developers tell the system whether or not their app is tablet ready or not. I believe we could trust developers to be honest as abuse of the system would very likely lead to bad reviews and getting bad ranking in the Google Play. The Google Play client could then prioritize tablet ready apps when user is searching for apps on tablets or show a badge, not unlike the top developer badge, for apps that are tablet ready.
Anyways, Android tablets just became very relevant. You should make sure that your apps have a tablet UI on 7" tabs as well as on the larger ones. I should do that too. My own app doesn't have a tablet UI but it will soon.
Whats your take in the new tablet UI for 7 devices, that we can see on the nexus.
ReplyDeleteI think it kinda works in portrait, but in landscape is a complete screen waster, it really seems that they sust copy the kindle UI/phone UI and did't carefully design a better layout.
Hey Flávio,
DeleteI don't have N7 yet so I can't form that solid opinion myself yet and must rely on 2nd hand information and pictures. In my opinion the ICS phone UI for home screen seems to be working very well. It is locked to portrait on home screen same way Galaxy Nexus is. It it pretty clear that N7 is meant to be used primarily in the portrait mode. They also did confirm that 10" tabs still use the HC tablet UI.
I think this is interested and seems like a good choice. They did tweak the UI a bit to make it better fit the 7" form factor. To really make up my mind about it I need to have it for few weeks in use first.
Good ideas about app discoverability on Google Play. This should be just like Page Rank SEO for web sites, where Google flexes its muscles and people desperate for a decent score will obey just about any best-practice that is highlighted.
ReplyDeleteSame thing should apply to Android apps:
- any app that has a conformant UI and icons should automatically rank higher than apps that don't make any use of Holo
- when searching on a particular device, apps that define layouts that more specifically target that device should outrank apps that use less-specific views (bit like how specificity works with CSS rules)
Of course, these suggestions can be gamed, but Google is used to thinking about this sort of problem by now. I'm sure they could figure out a system that rewards good developers.
Also, I just took a look and realised your Mentions app has an iOS icon. Shame on you. :P I hate how bad iOS icons look on my Home screen, and this is a major factor in deciding if I will even download an app at all, let alone pay for it.
ReplyDeleteDoes this tool generate code that requires Android 3.0 or newer, or does it support older versions as well?
ReplyDeleteFor now it is only for 3.0+ but the tools team said that they're working on making it work on older versions too.
DeleteOh my bloody god.
ReplyDeleteFirst things first. How have I only just found this website?! It's brilliant! Just what I need.
Secondly this is a massive feature for me. I'm am literally in the middle of my UI design right now, creating imagebuttons in photoshop when I came across this site and this post.
I'm tempted to either code my app for 3.0+ only (that's a huge market to lose out on however) or make a separate tablet version of my app.
At the moment it's a bit of nightmare getting my app working smoothly on both phone and tablet but I'm making sure it is exactly that, smooth on all screen sizes. This is a big step forward all in all.
It would save people having to create multiple layouts for small-medium-large screens like I'm doing now.
Google and Android together made a good position these days and even something interesting has build up this time. Android Tablets are really getting more relevant now.
ReplyDelete