What does pixel precision mean in an environment meant for different screen sizes, resolutions and even ratios? Good design means things like alignment, relationships between elements, ratios between sizes etc. It doesn't mean 7px or 10px. What I'm saying is that you can design things very well without pixel-perfect precision and while Android's tools may be more manual (essentially a saner HTML without cross-browser crap), they are not out of reach of any HTML developer.
And yes, our apps are not identical: Android has a drawer, dilaogs, spinners, toasts, uses the back button etc. But at the end of the day, you'll find the same functional screens, presenting the same information and offering the same functionality.
Pixel precision means that we can send a standard PSD to a client and they can style it and send it back so that we can slice it up and deliver the finished app.
Android's layout is definitely more powerful but you cannot set every property in code that you can set in XML.
We've started using separate layout files for every screen resolution tranche (e.g. layout-land) but I am still hoping for a way to preview multiple resolutions simultaneously.
Thank you for respecting the Android consumer and not doing something like a "Back" navigation button on-screen.
Pixel precision means that we can send a standard PSD to a client and they can style it and send it back so that we can slice it up and deliver the finished app.
This is meaningless when you have variable screen sizes to deal with (or at least a large enough number of fixed screen sizes to make this impractical). You can get away with essentially making a UI out of images on iOS, but not on Android.
Android's layout containers are far more flexible than iOS's springs and struts system. I've found this to be true of MacOS desktop programming as well, in the face of something like Gtk or Qt. Maybe my brain is just wired to prefer fluid, auto-adjusting layouts, but I find the Apple way of UI layout to be very primitive and limiting.
Do you guys just ignore color fidelity on the devices in this process? I found the earlier iPhones and iPod Touches had pretty different color profiles to the iPhone 4 (and iPad).
I guess layout is, strictly speaking, more important to UX than pitch-perfect color. Still, it's one of the things that bugged me when working on my (aborted) iOS project.
We better fire our designer :)
He did not know about this.
He does have one of those colour matching doohickeys to calibrate his monitor.
In general, I think as long as it is not a CMYK print ad, a little deterioration in colour is ok.
I am surprised he didn't. The contrast of the displays is noticeably worse on older models. And that pretends that older models are not well... old.
I was just hoping you had some sweet solution because I think you could make a business out of layout, resolution, and color testing for mobile all on its own.
And yes, our apps are not identical: Android has a drawer, dilaogs, spinners, toasts, uses the back button etc. But at the end of the day, you'll find the same functional screens, presenting the same information and offering the same functionality.