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points by cowlevel 3 days ago | 0 comments

Android used to have a dedicated menu key that would always bring up a menu. It was removed to chase Apple's 100% screen design.

[–] FreakyT 3 days ago

IMO, the old Android menu button wasn't great UX. It ended up just being a miscellaneous laundry list of random functions, and the users would just need to learn "spam the menu button randomly on every screen just in case the needed action is hiding in there."

[–] cowlevel 2 days ago

Isn't that the same as a win95-style menu? Whenever you want to do an action you have to look for it in the top menu and try right-clicking related objects on-screen.

[–] andechs 3 days ago

Long-press and the ••• menu in the overflow is a far superior UI paradigm than having a purpose built menu button.

90% of the time, even in Android that was pre-Honeycomb, the menu ended up just showing what would have been in the overflow anyways.

Android really did end up doing a lot better on the UX side that iOS with the contextual action bar and long-press to select. The idea of selection mode on iOS is still a weird process, and it's been mostly worked around since with higher PPI screens and touch sensors, instead doing a small area to "select" items on iOS

[–] robinsonb5 3 days ago

> Long-press and the ••• menu in the overflow is a far superior UI paradigm than having a purpose built menu button.

I disagree - long-press isn't intuitive or discoverable, and it's slow. You could make a case that they're a good fit for mobile, but they're truly horrible on desktop.

[–] dbgobrrr 3 days ago

For me, long-press is one of the most infuriating UX features of mobile. Probably the top on the offenders list for me is the copy-paste with the handles (which of course relies on long-press to trigger).

Hard buttons beat soft buttons for UX any time. You can use them with a glove, you can feel where the are located and you don't accidentally click because your finger was close enough for the capacitive touch sensor to trigger.

[–] mech422 3 days ago

God, I hate copy/paste on android. tbh, I hate the whole 'gestures' thing where there never seems to be an actual 'instruction sheet' of what gestures are available. I wish they would make new apps provide a 'manifest' of gestures they support so your phone could have an up to date list based on which apps you have installed.

[–] sombragris 2 days ago

Worse, when I try to select text from whatever note with important data I have, the first option is "Cut", which means losing data (i.e., data is deleted from the source). "Copy" is hidden behind a hamburger menu. Who was the stupid person at Google who thought this would be good UX??

[–] skydhash 3 days ago

I’ve replaced the android headunit with a buttons and segmented display one (kenwood) because it was just horrendous. Now, it’s easy to switch sources, skip back and forth, and adjust volume with minimal looking. Tactical feedback and location memory is great UX.

[–] frantathefranta 3 days ago

Just got nostalgic about the 4 hardware buttons on my Sony Xperia Play: back-home-context(option)-search.

Still the best navigable phone I had when coupled with the Nova Launcher gestures.

[–] necovek 3 days ago

I find that HP/Palm Pre with WebOS was best even if we ignore the physical keyboard (sliding left/right on the touch area below the screen or on the screen with a button pressed really made it easy to select text easily and precisely). Nokia N9 with Maemo/Meego was second best but it excelled in the cards interface for multi-tasking.

Some of those were taken into other OSes but nowhere were they implemented so smoothly.

[–] cowlevel 1 day ago

Those were the standard android buttons.

[–] dansquizsoft 3 days ago

And the world has been improved for it ever since. What a waste of screen real-estate these buttons were...