iphone

Android's back button is a problem. A big problem.

Others have already identified this in a broad sense, but I wanted to give a few concrete examples of why I (as a guy who wants to simply port a couple apps from the iOS platform to Android) think the back button (especially) is a bad idea.

Disorientation

Mobile phones, and tablets especially, require a lot of UX work in the area of interface orientation. For my extremely-basic CNL app, I've spent hours tweaking little interface elements that change when the interface is rotated from portrait to landscape.

The tendency in iOS is to use a 'back' button with the label of the previous function/screen in a given app in a navigation bar at the top of the current screen. This allows a user to freely move about inside an app, and is pretty much consistent across all apps. Additionally, this 'universal back button' is always at the top left of the screen—just like a web browser.

I haven't seen much about this feature yet, so I figured I'd put it through its paces and share what I found. WYSIWYG editing on iOS devices is finally here! For a long time, contentEditable support has been lacking on iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches, and it's been slightly annoying, as the only way to add richly-formatted text on these devices was doing a two-step through finding the carat characters and writing the HTML yourself.

The second app developed by Midwestern Mac is Catholic News Live, or CNL for short.

Or... "Best Practices of In-App Web Browsers"

Being the usability nut that I am, I have decided that my goal of making a perfect in-app browser for various iPhone apps is an impossible task. But, judging from what I've been able to do so far, and from many different Web View examples I've seen from around the web, there are some basics that every in-app browser should get right.

I'll start by showing the in-app browser in two very well-known iPhone apps: Facebook and Twitter.

Midwestern Mac, LLC worked with the Archdiocese of St. Louis to build a location-aware, news aggregating, and content submission app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The app, Catholic STL, has three main features, and leverages many different iOS APIs.

From strictly a hardware perspective, the Droid cannot beat the iPhone. (For those who don't yet know: the Droid is Motorola's 'savior phone,' which they hope will make them a prominent phone handset maker again). How can I be sure? Well, look at the below diagram:

Basically, it comes down to originality, memorability, and design.