What’s Missing in Android Intents

http://blog.inkmobility.com/post/61414396620/whats-missing-in-android-intents

by ananddass • 13 years ago

12 6 13 years ago

blog.inkmobility.com

Groxx2• 13 years ago

tl;dr: inconsistent interface, no recommendations when nothing can handle it.

Generally quite true, though the 'share' icon on Android is pretty consistent. Easily 95%+ of the apps I've used have used that same icon.

A lot of this would be / could be solved by having some way you could replace the system's chooser. I hadn't thought of that before reading this article, but that would be pretty darn cool, and could be a significant improvement.

Zigurd2• 13 years ago

If you don't like the system picker, you can pick the target before the StartActivity call using your own UI.

Groxx2• 13 years ago

True, but this would be even more inconsistency, as each app has to do it themselves.

danpalmer• 13 years ago

What's missing in iOS: Intents.

Zigurd2• 13 years ago

tl;dr Coder's boss complains "Why can't this be like it is on my iPhone." Coder complains "Why can't Google make it easy for the cases that kind of map to iPhone functionality to have a pre-cooked UI (I suppose ShareActionProvider isn't quite it?)

The real problem is too few apps implement too few Intent filters other than Intent.ACTION_SEND.

bikas• 13 years ago

tl;dr Because developer neither wasted time on Android apps nor learnt how to code properly, these kind of blog pops up. There's absolutely no random action when user presses a button, it's clear to person of intelligence level of 5 year old. Maybe author lacks that. Share intenet is quite robust even if for default gallery app shown. First, it only shows the apps that can share images/video, and also remembers the most used share so that user don't have to click to see share pop-up at all.

What’s Missing in Android Intents

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