Please Steal These webOS Features

http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2012/02/21/steal_webos_features/

by ugh • 14 years ago

385 159 14 years ago

ignorethecode.net

xtrimsky_• 14 years ago

I have a Touchpad myself, my wife has an iPad. I do prefer using WebOS than iOS. Love the multitask.

Only problem are the apps :(

Xuzz4• 14 years ago

One of the cool parts of webOS being released under the Apache license is that it makes patents much less of an issue. The Apache license's patent grants mean that Apple, Google, Microsoft, or anyone else can freely take the best parts from webOS without having to worry about HP suing them. (Palm had a lot of valuable patents on mobile/smartphone UI, which are now essentially off the table.)

ConstantineXVI2• 14 years ago

Provided they "take the best parts" by re-using their code. The license doesn't kick in if you reimplement their patented functionality in your own code.

koenigdavidmj2• 14 years ago

Chances are that somebody giving you a patent license via the Apache license is also going to be quite reasonable about letting you reimplement it.

mjs• 14 years ago

Interesting. Is there an Apache FAQ or similar that explains this in more detail? (The Apache License FAQ http://www.apache.org/foundation/license-faq.html doesn't cover it.)

nailer• 14 years ago

Playbook OS stole the cards feature, OS 2 includes the number row keyboard for all password inputs (this is super useful), and email tabs.

It also gets 354 on html5test.com, the highest of any tablet browser, including Chrome Beta.

atourgates• 14 years ago

This article is a wonderful articulation of some of what I've been feeling since I replaced my Palm Pre with an iPhone 4 nearly a couple years ago.

There are simply some things that WebOS's UI got better than iOS - and nearly two years later, using what is generally lauded as being the best mobile UI in the industry, I still miss some of those things.

I have a recurring daydream where Android incorporates the best of WebOS into its next release, and it's suddenly far-and-away the best mobile OS.

p1itopre• 14 years ago

"I have a recurring daydream where Android incorporates the best of WebOS into its next release, and it's suddenly far-and-away the best mobile OS."

Its happening already. Matias Duarte ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matias_Duarte ) has been working his magic for sometime now.

smacktoward2• 14 years ago

The problem is that ICS is the only Android version for phones that includes any of Duarte's magic, and getting ICS out to the huge population of users of existing Android devices is a major problem. Most won't get it at all, and the few devices that will get it are getting it verrrrry slowly. And even if you go to buy a new device today, odds are that it won't come with ICS, and there are few guarantees that it will even get an upgrade later on.

That's not really Google's fault -- it has much more to do with the various (crappy) carrier- and device-manufacturer specific customizations having to all be carted over to ICS -- but it does mean that for the vast majority of users the "Android experience" is going to be stuck at 2.x quality until 2013 at least. Which is a shame.

Edit: clarified that first sentence refers to versions of Android available for phones. You know, the versions of Android people actually care about.

Yhippa2• 14 years ago

It sounds like he's mentioning almost everything great about webOS except the lack of polished or first-party apps. Everytime I use my Touchpad I get sad that I don't have the same experience on my WP7. webOS makes iOS and Android feel like kludges to the solution of an OS designed for mobile usage.

joenathan4• 14 years ago

I have the opposite reaction, I love Android 4.0 on my Touchpad, while I very much hate using WebOS. In particular I don't like the cards, I find them too gimmicky and I always end up missing my home screens & my widgets and the speed and flexibility of Android.

Here is a quick video I made yesterday of the latest Android build for the Touchpad http://youtu.be/qqn8etizQqY

downx33• 14 years ago

Enjoyed your video. Would be great to get hold of one of those Touchpads...

Yhippa2• 14 years ago

Awesome video! I might have to give that a shot. It looks much more responsive than Gingerbread on my Galaxy Tab 10.1.

untog3• 14 years ago

I never got to try WebOS, and I really wish I had (I know I can download an emulator, but you can't emulate day-to-day usage).

That said, I'm using a Windows Phone these days, and it's fantastic. No, really. The UI is amazing, and going back to my old Android phone feels incredibly clunky by comparison. I wouldn't recommend one just yet- there's still work to do. For one, third party apps can't interface with native apps- for instance, the Messaging app seamlessly combines SMS, Facebook and Live chat, but I can't hook in GChat. If/when they get that set up they'll have a very loyal customer in me.

freehunter• 14 years ago

I would really love them to put in more apps for the chat[1]. GChat, AIM, etc. Some of this may be up to the developers of the application in question: Google may not allow Microsoft to do the GChat. Google doesn't even supply a Google+ app, nor a truly working web interface for Windows Phone.

I'm using ICS on my Touchpad. It's nice as a tablet OS for a power user, but after using WP7 I don't know how much I would want to go back to Android on my phone. There's just not that much I do on my phone where I need to sacrifice a slick and intuitive interface for the sake of deeper access to the system. On my tablet I need that and am grateful for it, but I'd rather not fiddle with my phone.

[1]I should add, this is a sticking point for WebOS for me as well. Very nice chat app, but no Facebook chat drops it down the drain for me. There's no way to integrate Facebook chat into it without Facebook doing it themselves, and they aren't planning on doing so.

untog3• 14 years ago

Google may not allow Microsoft to do the GChat

Well, GChat is openly accessible via XMPP, so it's quite possible to do it without Google's permission. The question is whether MS would want to do it, at the risk of marginalising Live chat.

I'd like to believe they've moved on from that mindset, but I'm not quite convinced. Certainly, I'm not sure if they'd want to provide user support for GChat through official WP channels. What I'd love is for WP to provide hooks for developers to make their own GChat XMPP service, and slot it into the OS.

Services as opposed to apps makes a lot of sense for WP, because it's already deliberately non-app centric.

51Cards2• 14 years ago

I still feel that WebOS's GMail application is one of the best yet on a mobile device. I have a TouchPad, an Android Tablet and an Android Phone. When I hear the email 'chime' go off, I always grab the TouchPad first. The sliding panes UI design to me is brilliant.

j_col3• 14 years ago

Worth pointing out for non-webOS people that the mail application on Touchpad/Pre is for all email providers, not just GMail.

51Cards2• 14 years ago

True, good point. I sometimes forget that as I only use it for Gmail.

abruzzi• 14 years ago

I agree with almost everything in the article, but for me, webOS's achilles heel is speed. Even with my touchpad overclocked to 1.7ghz, it still feels sluggish. But after a day of using it over my iPad 2, when I return to the iPad, I find myself swiping things that don't swipe on iOS.

My one disagreement is on the keyboard. I like that it has the number row, and behaves more like a real world keyboard, but on iOS my typing is much more accurate.

vibrunazo• 14 years ago

I never used webOS. But I have the impression the author isn't familiar with Android. It seems most of the features the talks about webOS having better than iOS are alredy on Android. Better multitasking -- showing you screenshots of running apps and tabs. App intercommunication (intents). Shared account info. Etc.

In fact, the only time the author wrote about Android was when he said Android notifications sucks and he loves how he can drag notifications away in webOS. But you can do that same thing in Android 4.0.

Then again, I never really used webOS myself, so this could be just an outsider's misconceptions. Is the author really missing Android features or is webOS really all that much better in doing what Android already does?

untog3• 14 years ago

A lot of those Android features are new in 4.0, though. Given the depressingly low number of phones out there running it, it isn't surprising that people don't know about the changes.

deet• 14 years ago

Yes, the author is missing some Android features. Android notifications, at least in Android 4.0, are as usable as those in WebOS. Android 4, at least in the tablet form, also has the convenient access to settings the author mentions. Overall, many things in Android are now on par with WebOS, but that is a recent development.

The WebOS multitasking paradigm still has significant advantages other mobile OSes, and I would say that that is its biggest remaining advantage. I find it makes it much easier to organize ongoing activities into logical tasks, especially when those tasks involve using multiple applications.

That said, since I installed Android 4 on my Touchpad I have yet to boot back into WebOS. At least some of that is due to having an Android 4 phone and wanting consistency, however.

huggyface• 14 years ago

The author was pandering to the iOS audience, and the tone followed.

darklajid2• 14 years ago

You start with a disclaimer that isn't big enough.

I'm on Android, 3rd device generation so far. I also own 2 (outdated) WebOS phones. Android is on a beta/unstable ICS ROM right now and - comes slowly closer.

The ancient Palm Pre Plus here feels nearly as snappy (or - better even in some cases) and a joy to use. These 'swipe away the notifications' thing? That probably _was_ stolen from WebOS. It's just too similar and was in WebOS loong ago.

Multitasking became better on ICS, before that it was crap. Even comparing ICS with WebOS: The latter just stole from WebOS again (which, I agree with the author, is probably a good idea by now). You can swipe apps off screen to remove them (ICS: Left to right. WebOS: Bottom to top). You see previews. What Android lacks is the groups (see his email example). So - again Android's close, but not there yet.

Shared account info is not the same as Synergy.

"Is the author really missing Android features or is webOS really all that much better in doing what Android already does?"

WebOS does it better and did it before. The recommendation to steal its ideas (or - if I get one wish - revive it as open-source project) is still valid, even if you consider ICS the 'standard' Android (which, in my world, it isn't yet).

cpeterso2• 14 years ago

> became better on ICS, before that it was crap. Even comparing ICS with WebOS: The latter just stole from WebOS again

Not surprising now that Matias Duarte, former VP of webOS Human Interface and User Experience, is now Google's Director of Android User Experience. :)

yardie4• 14 years ago

Android has grown leaps and bounds since WebOS was released but there were so many things that webOS got right at the start.

* multitasking worked well because you had to use it. Start 3-4 apps by the time you launched the 4th the first would be ready to use.

*Shared account is closer to iMessage than shared account. You could have a conversation by SMS, email, twitter, AIM, Facebook and LinkedIn. They would all be displayed in the same card. That is what shared contacts means in webOS.

mgcross• 14 years ago

I got the same impression. I think only 4.0 has running apps and the ability to swipe away notifications (like CM), right? The webOS cards also act as stacks of windows within each app. It's nice to be able to click one in the background to bring it into the foreground, swipe one up to close, etc. WebOS is clean and pretty. Feels like the good parts of Android and iOS. Unfortunately, it can be slow and laggy, and only has around 5,000 apps.

masklinn8• 14 years ago

> I never used webOS. But I have the impression the author isn't familiar with Android.

He might not be aware that Google pre-emptively took his advice on their very latest Android version running on all of one phone out of the box (as far as I know, is there any other handset sold with ICS yet?), and did indeed "lift" many WebOS features for their own use.

LukasMathis6• 14 years ago

I own a bunch of Android phones (though none of them run ICS, so my experience with the notification system is based on Gingerbread), and I have the Sony tablet.

I'm not a huge fan of Android's UI. Since Duarte is working at Google, it's getting much better, but it still has a ways to go.

commandar2• 14 years ago

Mattias Duarte, who was the lead UX designer on WebOS, is now head of UX development for Android. ICS has lifted a lot of ideas from WebOS as a result.

That said, WebOS multitasking is still much better than even ICS. The thumbnail menu in ICS is an improvement over the old Android task switcher, but it doesn't even come close to the fluidity of swiping up to bring up the card view and then flicking between running apps (which aren't thumbnails; they update in realtime as you're looking at them).

>App intercommunication (intents). Shared account info.

These are definitely areas where Android is still ahead. The account integration in WebOS is okay, but works far better in Android. And intent are the killer feature of Android, IMO.

nieve2• 14 years ago

The live update is good enough & the viewing quality sufficient that with the homebrew patch for larger active cards (and the patching is another feature I miss on ICS) I'll flick up, drag over slightly to read a number or address off another card, and drop back rather than bothering with copy & paste. I do the same for an irc notification out of wIRC or a repository address for wTerm.. webOS is the only tablet UI I've used that made working on something in one app while referring to 2-3 web pages & emails fluid and comfortable. The cognitive load is lower, the act of switching faster, and the gestures more natural (you don't have to aim for finger-sized targets, most things take advantage of Fitt's Law). It's not visually stunning, but you miss it on anything else.

thekevan• 14 years ago

Most of these features exist in some incarnation or another in Android.

stfu• 14 years ago

I wish they had put the same effort in creating some basic apps that actually work. There aren't that many must-haves, a decent text editor, presentation and video player, browser and ebook reader would have gone a long way. But just the Pdf reader itself was a complete disaster. When basic things like slightly larger file sizes (6+ MB pdfs) bring the app to a hold, or basic functions ( search within a pdf, mark/copy text) are completely absent, all the beauty of the system itself won't help. But at least CyanogenMod came to the rescue.

Hovertruck• 14 years ago

"The cards UI for switching between apps in webOS is such an idea. I don’t think I need to elaborate."

Well that really sucks for people reading the article who have never used webOS...

generalk• 14 years ago

The idea is that you can view all open applications as a row of "cards". You can easily swipe between them and select a different one, or flick one away to close it.

masklinn8• 14 years ago

The whole task switcher of WebOS looks like (iOS) Safari's tab-switching (with apps instead of pages of course), except with more goodness: the applications stay live (à la Android) and can be seen updating in the switcher, you flick applications off-screen to close them, it's possible to group application cards to make switching between a group faster, etc...

It's all very neat, and very easy to understand. You can see the WebOS 1.0 cards demo here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUSui3rH1a8

ernesth• 14 years ago

Is app switching different on other smartphones? I only have a symbian which does quite the same.

fragsworth• 14 years ago

I know lots of Apple fanatics are extreme minimalists but I really think iOS should also steal the back button from the Android. I very much dislike when one app causes another app to open, and then I have to press the home button and find the original app to go back to it. And if I'm lucky, it's still in the same state as before.

yardie4• 14 years ago

double-click the home button brings up the task switcher. The leftmost app is the last opened and reopening it usually resumes the app.

lbotos• 14 years ago

I've learned this myself from someone else like you who has passed this on. When I bought my iPhone the manual was extremely vague on features like task switcher. Where did you learn this? (Sorry for going OT, I just wonder if there is a "Secret Guide" somewhere that I've missed.)

bgarbiak• 14 years ago

Speaking of which: double-click is (IMHO) the worst possible solution for this. I keep accidentally getting to the search screen. "Home" button design is partially at fault here (why it's concave?) but the whole thing is clearly an after-thought addition to the system. Long-touch or some kind of a gesture would be way more convenient.

wvenable2• 14 years ago

I agree with fragsworth -- the back button is almost a necessity and double-clicking the home button and clicking the first task switcher icon is a poor substitute.

It's missing so much that I find myself expecting the in-app back button to go back to the previous app if I click it enough. BTW, I've never owned an Android phone so my expectations aren't carried over from another OS -- it just seems natural and it's jarring when it's missing.

xbryanx• 14 years ago

As my iPhone ages, the double click on the home button is becoming harder and harder to do. The physical button itself just isn't very responsive anymore. Devoting this essential function to something that can degrade over time seems like a big oversight for a company that puts such stock into industrial engineering.

masklinn8• 14 years ago

> I really think iOS should also steal the back button from the Android.

There are many potentially interesting things in Android (although I think WebOS would be a far better source of ideas to steal, it's always been).

But not the back button. The back button is probably the worst part of Android's UI, it's the embodiment of "mystery meat" navigation and interface: a hardware button which behaves in a completely arbitrary and essentially random manner without providing any clue as to what will happen when it's tapped.

jbellis• 14 years ago

And yet, many iOS apps end up using screen space on a Back button. And I find myself missing it on those that don't.

darklajid2• 14 years ago

That's a problem of the app you're looking at, not the button itself.

The design guidelines clearly state that you _shouldn't_ hijack that button to change the default of 'back to last activity' unless you have a very good reason to do so.

If you constantly see apps behaving unexpectedly - file a bug/complain to the developer/search for a better suited alternative? That actually adheres to the platform guidelines.

barrkel5• 14 years ago

Android's back button is its single best feature. Without it, I might not still be using Android. What it should do: go back to the screen you were previously on. Android apps are generally full-screen apps; there's little mystery there (IMO).

Unfortunately, Google is mandating that it acquire "up button" semantics rather than back button semantics - for many apps, it's supposed to go to the "top" level before it exits out. That I'm not a fan of, and I'm afraid it's going to encourage its "mystery meat" nature, because it'll no longer act like a browser back button.

megablast• 14 years ago

It if confusing, but having been forced to use an Android device for the last two months, and now back with the iPhone, it did have some advantages. Sure, you wouldn't know what it would do, but before having to go home and you just press the back button, and sometimes it takes you where you wanted, sometime it doesn't. Then you just rerun the app.

arnorhs• 14 years ago

Of course I am not familiar with your background, but I wonder what you base that opinion on.

What Android device did you own and use that had such a bad implementation of the back button?

tcard• 14 years ago

That's like saying that the 'T' letter key on the keyboard behaves unpredictably and should be removed just because any program could map it to any other character or action.

kickstand447• 14 years ago

Moved from the Palm Pre (1st gen.) to Android on EVO 3D 6 months ago. AFAIAC, both the Back button and the Home button are crutches. I use it w-a-y to much b/c there is no card implementation (like webOS had). It was very easy to go back & forth between open apps and cards within the same app. Backswipe=last screen viewed.Simple. The inability to easily, definitively close apps (upswipe/throw off screen on webOS) is maddening. I never know if an app is "still" running or really closed (& don't know until I go home & pick app.... Sloppy, messy, maddening. I REALLY miss webOS.

htilford• 14 years ago

My favorite is actually the back swipe on the Veer (WebOS). It's a left moving swipe on the bottom bevel. It took me a little while to realize it existed, but now that I've learned it it's a joy to use.

richbradshaw• 14 years ago

Having used an Android phone for a while, the back button was definitely a "feature" that I'm glad isn't on iOS - it very rarely does what you expect, and has a very odd feeling to it. It's probably the only button I've ever used where you never know quite what it will do.

Perhaps with the ICS interface guidelines being more heavily read this has improved, but on the phone I have it's a very bad interface.

whatusername• 14 years ago

Double-Click app switching helps with this problem.

edoloughlin• 14 years ago

> I very much dislike when one app causes another app to open, and then I have to press the home button and find the original app to go back to it.

While a bit more cumbersome than a back button, you can double-press the home button and the previous app will be on the left of the list of apps that appears on the bottom of the screen. No guarantees it'll remember its state, though :(

d5tryr2• 14 years ago

The back button doesn't make sense in Angry Birds. If an interface element is superfluous or unpredictable in Angry Birds then it makes no sense to bog down a touch interface with it.

Angry Birds may seem to be a silly little game, but it is not an edge case. It's an exemplar of interaction paradigms going forward.

charlieok• 14 years ago

You can double-click the home button, or use a four-finger swipe gesture, to pull up the list of “recent” applications along the bottom of the screen, and then tap one. Also, you can four-finger swipe right and left between applications.

baddox4• 14 years ago

The four-finger swipe only works on the iPad. That said, I love those gestures. I feel nearly as fast and as comfortable multitasking on my iPad as I do when doing similar light tasks (web browsing, music listening, IMing, etc.) on either of my desktop operating systems (Windows and Ubuntu).

feefie• 14 years ago

If you turn on Multitasking Gestures (Settings -> General -> Multitasking Gestures -> ON) you can go "back" one app by four-finger swiping the current app off the screen to the left (i.e. swipe your fingers from right to left). iOS automatically puts the apps "beside" each other so the swipe works even if the apps were previously not launched consecutively. I do this when reading www.jimmyr.com to return to Safari if it launches the YouTube app. I also use this if I forget I'm in Airplane Mode and I get the 'Turn Off Airplane Mode or Use Wi-Fi to Access Data' error message that gives me the option to jump directly to 'Settings'; once I turn Wi-Fi back on I four-finger swipe to get back to the app. It's on iOS 5 on my iPad-1 but I think you might need a iPhone 4 or 4S to get Multitasking Gestures on an iPhone (I can't find how to turn it on in the settings for my iPhone 3GS). Edit: thanks to baddox for pointing out this is an iPad-only feature (confirmed here: http://www.apple.com/ios/features.html), or on iPhones that have been jailbroken.

baddox4• 14 years ago

You cannot get those multitask gestures on any iPhone unless you jailbreak it.

zerostar07• 14 years ago

... especially when you are typing in a form on safari, switch to something and then try to go back only to have safari reload your page (because of memory limitations). boom goes the form.

phren0logy2• 14 years ago

webOS seems to have the opposite problem of most open source projects: great interface but could use some work on the technical side.

An OS with a great interface is one hell of a head start for open source on tablets.

LukasMathis6• 14 years ago

That's a great point. Never occurred to me to look at it like that, but you're right. Open source projects often fail to reach mass acceptance because they're designed by and for the people who work on the project - programmers, that is. webOS has a huge head start in the design area, so it neatly circumvents open source's achilles heel.

phren0logy2• 14 years ago

That's what I'm hoping, because the tablet space seems begging for competition. It's clearly the future of much of main-stream computer use. I don't even care if it gets all that much adoption. As long as the market isn't locked in by one vendor focused on native apps, it makes a strong argument for focusing on the HTML/JS open web experience a top priority.

On the flip side of the native app argument, he fact that native WebOS apps are HTML/JS also makes it a much more attractive target than it would be if it required learning another language. Even a modest percentage of that market would make that effort worthwhile for a web-based product.

larrik• 14 years ago

The article is great, but I don't really understand why you bought an iPad 2 if you never used your original iPad.

LukasMathis6• 14 years ago

I have no excuse. I just like gadgets.

newman314• 14 years ago

All of these sound like arguments for continuing to use webOS =)

thinkcomp• 14 years ago

I love WebOS. I just wish they'd fix the ampersand bug (where & becomes &) in the browser URL! It's still an issue in 3.0.5.

byproxy2• 14 years ago

Well, now that it has been open-sourced, you can fix the bug yourself!

prophetjohn2• 14 years ago

I don't understand how Android's notification system is supposed to be a cluttered mess relative to iOS. Looking at screenshots, it looks they're both pretty similar, but iOS having more stuff in there.

LukasMathis6• 14 years ago

I think part of the problem comes down to application behavior. On my Android phone, tons of applications generate notifications that really shouldn't, so the notification widget constantly fills up with needless stuff.

prophetjohn2• 14 years ago

Well, I haven't used iOS since version 3, but I see screenshots with notifications for weather, stocks, words with friends, pretty much everything on your phone.

Maybe I've just got notifications turned off for other apps, but on Gingerbread, I only get notifications for texts, emails and updates.

joelhaasnoot• 14 years ago

Lots of apps do like to push their notifications. It's because of one of two reasons most of the time: a) more time in their app to get you to see/click ads or b) Android 2.2 or earlier killed apps that weren't doing much. Having a notification fixed that.

LukasMathis6• 14 years ago

On second thought, I shouldn't have complained about Android in this way. I haven't used ICS, which might have solved the problems I've encountered, and I didn't explain what I don't like about Android's notification system. So I've removed that sentence from the article.

MetalMASK• 14 years ago

I echo with this post greatly. I've tried out ipad and transformer (Android), the touchpad is really indeed the most intuitive to use. I use it daily for browsing the web, writing Emails and playing some games -- and I leave the frequently used app only, switching between the windows is intuitive and very snappy, making multi-tasking not only possible but very usable.

I didn't even bother to install Android on my touchpad (even it's dual-boot) cause the lag on android is a huge let down.

WebOS's UI is similar to iOS in a lot of ways, it's like iOS (once you open the app/home screen) with an additional desktop/workspace. I look forward to some open-source development for the Touchpad. (First request would be a good pdf viewer)

goatslacker• 14 years ago

webOS is far from perfect but damn it is still the best mobile OS out there. I would trade off some performance to have these features in my mobile phone.

It's sad the general public doesn't feel the same way and I really hope other mobile OSs can learn from webOS and innovate on those problems that webOS has solved really well.

Osiris• 14 years ago

I absolutely love the way webOS does task switching. It's so easy and simple to switch between apps. Even ICS's new task switch requires pressing and holding, then scrolling through a list of apps. WebOS needs only a single quick press and swipe left or right. It's fast and easy. I love it.

joenathan4• 14 years ago

Pressing and holding? I don't think you are using a phone designed for ICS...

togasystems• 14 years ago

Are any hardware manufacturers planning on releasing a tablet/phone with WebOS baked in?

EGreg• 14 years ago

I have to say, I really like WebOS and its paradigms. What will come of it?

etomer• 14 years ago

On a side note, blog authors; please don't stick your picture site-wide!

gumpiko• 14 years ago

I wish I understood all this, I have a good product where people are truly making a lot of money but I am technically challenged. I did send a tweet with "small business" but it didnt make it to the correct page. http://www.tarads.com

baddox4• 14 years ago

I still don't understand why people jab at the iPad by saying it's "only for consuming content." You don't hear people leveling the same complaint against TVs and MP3 players, which are specifically designed and marketed solely for consumption of content. Heck, even personal computers probably spend most of their time helping their owners consume content.

firefoxman13• 14 years ago

>(On task switching) "Nothing else I’ve seen comes close."

So true. It just feels SO much more like multitasking than any other platform.

And notifications? I agree, amazing.

I wish the article had covered the Gesture Area. I know the Touchpad did away with it, but the Gesture Area made everything so fluid, easy and intuitive.

Another interface feature I LOVE is the swipe-to-delete. The super-hot iOS ToDo app "Clear" has that exact behavior and people love it.

And how about TouchStone charging? Sooo nice. Pretty sure Palm was the first mainstream phone maker to have this functionality built-in.

One more feature that was amazing was the ability to bump-to-sync with other newer webOS devices. It's like the popular app Bump on steroids.

...And of course we all know how the apps were HTML/JS which was a brilliant idea. Why make everyone learn a new language just to write apps?

j_col3• 14 years ago

You, sir, have pretty much summed up everything I love about webOS :-)

rboyce• 14 years ago

The gesture area definitely made things fluid and easy, but unfortunately, it was absolutely not intuitive. If you haven't done (or have forgotten) the first use tutorial, it takes some luck to figure out how to navigate webOS. (I think that Clear has the same problem: swipe to mark as done/delete is not discoverable; it only works for people who already know of swipe to delete as a system gesture.)

firefoxman13• 14 years ago

That is true, but I'd say swiping backward is about as intuitive as the now-famous "pinch-to-zoom" gesture: once you know it, it makes sense. It just takes warming people up to the idea; a luxury Palm didn't really have.

rimantas• 14 years ago

  > Why make everyone learn a new language
  > just to write apps?

Why do you assume everyone knows Javascript and HTML?

j_col3• 14 years ago

I'll willing to guess that a lot more know that than Objective-C.

byproxy2• 14 years ago

I feel that you missed an opportunity to mention the gesture area, probably my favorite part of interacting with my Pre 2. It seems so intuitive and it's something I miss when using my iPod Touch. Though, I suppose that's more of a hardware feature than a software one.

twodayslate• 14 years ago

You can get some of these features on your iPhone now if you jailbreak. Jailbreaking makes iOS so much better.

Tycho• 14 years ago

I remember RiscOS/Archimedes on the 90s Acorn computer had a great feature - the third mouse button, when used to click an item in one of the toolbar menus, would cause the command/item to execute but keep the menu up after the mouse click. So you could pick another item without navigating to the same menu again.

I've got no idea why this hasn't been ripped off or licensed. The only similar feature I've seen is Windows 7 letting you close windows from the task bar while keeping the window list open.

lemieux• 14 years ago

Why am I under the impression that Android has every single thing that is mentionned in this article? ... Wait... because it does...

webjprgm• 14 years ago

> Splitting document management up into two parts, the way Windows and the Mac do it (with parts of it happening in the Finder, and parts of it happening in applications’ open/safe dialogs) is one of the dumbest things desktop systems do.

On that note, my workflow for web apps is "touch <filename>" followed by a command to open it in the desired editor. This applies to anything that I want to place in a deeply-nested hierarchy which I already have open in Terminal or Finder but that would require effort in the open-save dialog. In some cases I do copy+paste+rename+double-click in the Finder, then select-all+delete and start editing.

On the other hand, when I want to jot down some notes I usually go to TextEdit or TextWrangler and just start typing, then worry about where to save it later.

skat_et_dieu• 14 years ago

Ah!!! Its so awesome to get some recognition on my beloved huevos!! (webOS)

I've been a huge supporter since the original Palm Pre. Now I carry my Pre3, TouchPad and iPhone. iOS has nothing on webOS!!

I think devs should at least give Enyo a try at learning to make apps for webOS since they can port them to Android and iOS with Phonegap. And if webOS takes off after it is open sourced they will be set with skills to make apps for webOS!!

jejones3141• 14 years ago

I moved to Android solely because Sprint and then HP itself had thrown webOS under the bus, but every day I wish I had the webOS UI. With webOS it's obvious which apps are running: it's running iff it has a window, and flicking the window upward is guaranteed to stop the app. Under Android, there may or may not be a way to explicitly stop an app, and if there's a way to find out which are running, I haven't found it yet. Yes, ideally I shouldn't have to worry about it, but with finite resources (including battery as well as RAM) I do, and with Android I'm in the dark.

d5tryr2• 14 years ago

>I’m pretty much only using it to consume content. I suspect that most people use their iPads similarly:

And with that line it seems clear that this article is not about people like me...

vilterp• 14 years ago

Hopefully we can hope to see some of this good design thinking in Android, since the design lead of webOS, Matias Duarte, is now design lead at Android (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matias_Duarte)

damian2000• 14 years ago

I felt like I hit the jackpot after scoring a $149 HP touchpad (32GB) in the fire sale last year ... now I feel even better about it after reading this...!

rogerbinns• 14 years ago

Android also has a central place for your accounts, and there is an AccountManager API to get access to them. You'll find your Google, Skype, Facebook, linkedin etc in there (and apps can add their own.) http://developer.android.com/reference/android/accounts/Acco...

Since iOS doesn't have this, and many developers did their apps on iOS first, they ignore the functionality and ask you for credentials etc again. It is extremely annoying. I regularly contact app developers to point out they could do better. https://plus.google.com/110166527124367568225/posts/bz1pN3az...

I encourage other Android users to do the same. You should never have to re-enter credentials the system already knows about.

skrebbel• 14 years ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't my Android Honeycomb tablet have half these features? Quick access to common settings check, system-wide accounts, check, decent keyboard check (just install your favourite keyboard app to replace the default). Admittedly, the task-switching is awful on it though.

hughc• 14 years ago

This talk of contracts sounds to me just like Android's intents, which have been in there forever - one example being a app having a share button that then pops up a list of all apps that offer an endpoint for a particular data type (ie share this photo by email / sms / dropbox / google plus / facebook / any other app you may have installed) - the hosting app has no idea about the endpoints, it just casts around and offers them to the user.

It's in scenarios like this where the back button makes perfect sense, where you change context midstream, and then wish to return to the original one. I recall on an iPhone in a similar scenario (emailing a photo) that there was no obvious way back to the place the photo came from - once you switched the mail app, it felt like a UX dead-end. Change your mind about sending the mail and you're stuck. Back works intuitively by comparison. It can even work in chains- snap a photo, share via an app that does image resizing, share the result again via email; back -> back -> and you're back in the camera app.

SudoSamurai• 14 years ago

Don't know if fanboy troll article or just ignorant...

You can do basically everything he outlined in Android.

1. Plethora of app switchers including the one that's always built-in.

2. Gmail and the built-in email app make switching to other emails to reference from pretty easy.

3. Android has this for apps, internet windows/tabs, and homescreens.

4. Again, Android already has this. Pretty much every app has a "share" feature that opens a universal list of applications you have installed/configured on your system. If they have a way that something can be shared to them, they show up in the list.

5. Android finally seems to be getting some nice things with the ICS keyboard. But oh, by the way, you can install OTHER keyboards on Android. Including my favorite: Swype. Look it up if you've never heard of it. Takes getting used to, but amazing once you do.

6. I love how this article passes over the fact that Apple stole Google's notification system from Android. It's a pull-down tray with centralized notifications including weather and stock objects that Apple (after swearing never to include these in their system) has the gaul to call "widgets." Most Android phones now have the option to clear notifications individually or en mass. ICS has implemented the "swipe away" feature and that feature has been around for a long damn time in the Android universe.

7. Depending on the phone you get, this differs. Unless, of course, you install an app that does it for any version of Android. Like Quick Settings or the pain version: Quicker. These apps can be brought up as overlays over any app or game and can be bound as either an ongoing notification in your tray to click on or as the long-press action on your search button (numerous other apps can share that functionality as well).

Please Steal These webOS Features

Related Stories