> Can someone educate me about the rationale behind Android tasks? I'm > also curious to know the thought process behind their design when they > were originally conceived?
I think the problem they solve is that it's hard to have a "multi- tasking" OS when only one thing can be on the screen at once. So the idea of tasks is that you can switch quickly between them, and they preserve your state in the context of that application: Maps -> View Business Details Contacts -> View Contact -> Edit Contact Now if am editing a contact and want to do something else like view business details, I can go back home, press the Maps icon, do whatever, and then use home to press contacts and arrive back at the edit contact screen. I guess there are a few problems with the current implementation though: it's quite complicated, and there's no real way for users to learn how it works. The "obvious" mental model is of a linear stack of activities, but that's not what actually happens so you get things like pressing back on the home screen does not actually take you back. And then there is a lack of guidelines around when to use the activity modes - as you have found. And finally the built-in apps do use the activity modes inconsistently. For instance my example is wrong because the contacts app does reset the task stack. I think this stuff will shake out with time. Better animations can help users figure out the application model. UI guidelines will help developers. Hopefully the built-in apps will either become consistent or at least call out in their manifests why they use certain attributes so people can learn from them. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
