Say Goodbye to the Menu Button | Hacker News Reader

Say Goodbye to the Menu Button

android-developers.blogspot.com

64 pointscleverjake47 comments

Tell you what...I'm a big Android fan. However, the removal of the menu button and the addition of the "..." action overflow button is the single biggest UX mistake I've seen on Android so far, for a very simple reason...the "..." is too small to easily press, and appears at different (mostly inconvenient) places on the screen. For example, a large part of the time it's on the far right hand side. As a guy who keeps his phone in his left hand most of the time, and who typically operates his phone with one hand, I have to reach across the entire phone with my thumb and hope to hit it. Not so with the menu button...it was easy to hit, and even if I had to reach across, it was easy to "feel" my way to it. I miss it quite a bit.

I absolutely, fully, 100% agree with this. "Hunt the back/options button" drives me nuts on iOS. The ramifications of this are that when options aren't "pretty", they are hard to get to - on iOS, if you want to change Safari settings, you have to exit Safari and go open a separate Settings app to change them. I swear under my breath every time I have to do it. The physical back button is the single most powerful feature Android has over iOS, and the physical menu button isn't far behind.

A single, consistent, verb for "give me more things to do with this view" is so much better than "guess which button/graphic/icon on this screen means 'menu', then find out where it is, then press it even though it's only 6px by 6px, because we didn't want it to overwhelm our listview".

Maybe a compromise could be reached by either a) adding a visual cue that there are menu actions for the current view, or b) making menu buttons in your app invoke the same menu that pressing the menu button would.

I feel like this is trending towards "iOS works with only one button, we should too", and I think it's the wrong step. The search button I could kind of see - it was nice, but rarely used just due to the nature of how mobile apps were built. The menu button? Leave it alone, please. I like it just how it is.

But the back button is horrible now that it doubles as an up button. It confused me and that kind of behavior makes it utterly useless. It’s a waste of space.

Yes. Too sad seeing Google step away from many great UX concepts that Android started out with, instead of further building up on them.

When done correctly, there's a separate up button and back doesn't double as up. There is confusion because when you are drilling down into an app "back" and "up" are the same place. Even worse, I suspect that confusion is why developers often get back/up handling wrong.

Hm, but then even Google’s stock apps get it wrong. I was using a factory fresh Galaxy Nexus.

Maybe we are talking about something different? What I mean is that sometimes, the back button does something different than taking you back to the last screen you were on.

Sadly, not even Google's apps do this correctly all of the time.

Google Voice is a particularly dreadful offender. If you click on a Google Voice notification, "back" doesn't take you "back" and it doesn't take you "up". AFAICT, it takes you "back within the app", which is often crazy.

Here's the scenario I just tried:

1. I was in Google Voice talking to person A.

2. I left Google Voice and was in another app X.

3. A text arrives from person B and I get a notification from Google Voice.

4. I click on the notification and go to my conversation with person B in Google Voice.

5. I hit "back". It didn't go back to app X (the Right Thing). It didn't go to my conversation list in Google Voice (the more common wrong thing). Instead, Google Voice, of course, goes to my conversation with person A!

I can only hope that one of the reasons the Android team published their design guidelines was to publicly shame the developers of substandard Google apps for Android.

Yeah, that’s because it’s deprecated. It’s supposed to go away. Good riddance.

Are you saying the "..." actions overflow button is supposed to go away? Because if you're not, your comment makes no sense in the context of mine.

It’s a legacy feature. It will go away.

And where will you put your user actions then, that belonged in the menu before? Invent a million inconsistent ways to stuff more things in the Action Bar or display some menus elsewhere in the UI? Sorry, but I liked the consistent hardware-button-activated menu much better for this purpose.

In the appropriate and logical places.

The menu button was a massive mess, idiotic from the beginning.

Can you explain what you didn't like about it? As a user, I found it to be dead simple to use, and as a developer, I had no problems working with it either.

Removing the menu button sounds like adding friction to me. Opening the options menu for every app is the same button press. You can do it with your eyes closed.

Also, doesn't the action bar just take up precious screen real estate? For something that users will only occasionally interact with, that doesn't seem like a good use of a limited resource.

I liked the menu button because it meant that you always knew where to go to get menu options. On iOS many apps have different symbols and locations for settings and as a daily Android user I've found it annoying searching for them.

On ICS it's silly checking down the bottom right (where the software buttons are) and sometimes top right (action bar) for the menu button, and if they are deprecating the bottom right/menu button option I can see it becoming just like iOS. When the action bar concept doesn't fit into the design developers will just have to shove menu options at a random place in their UI. I cannot comprehend how that is a better option than having a soft/hard menu button in the same place all the time.

...and what UX "expert" decided that when menu (or action overflow) would appear, sometimes it would be down, sometimes up top, and sometimes (I kid you not) both? It's software: if you're going to display something, be consistent about it!

It's the single most annoying thing about ICS. It's more annoying than the 4.5 hour usable battery life on the Galaxy Nexus. (You get 4.5 hours of screen-on time. You can manage close to 20 hours, if you don't actually use the thing, but what good is that?)

Sidebar here, but I'm running the Virtuous Inquisition ICS build on my Sensation, and I'm getting like 60 hours of screen-off time on a single charge, and something like 12-14 hours of "out and about" usage. Either Virtuous did something astounding with their build, or something's severely off there.

I have a GSM/HSPA+ Galaxy Nexus on T-Mobile and battery life is similar to what you describe on the Sensation. A colleague briefly tried the LTE Galaxy Nexus on Verizon and returned it within a week, because the battery life was astoundingly poor as described by dsr_. Conclusion: LTE kills the battery.

I _like_ having physical buttons. I can reach for them and they're right where my muscle memory expects it to be. I'm about to upgrade to the Nexus and I expect to miss the physical back button a lot.

Agreed... my Desire is currently almost 2 years old and I'm getting a contract renewal in a month, and I have no idea what phone to get: there are no smartphones with proper hardware buttons on the market anymore, save for a few SE handsets; it's all in useless capacitive buttons now, or none at all since ICS.

Good riddance. I hate when I look around how to do something and it was hidden in the menu button the entire time. It was completely unintuitive when there were menu options to use, and when there were not. That's why I designed the android version of my app, like the iPhone version, and put all possible options in the on-screen design itself. It's funny too because other android devs told me 'nooo use the hard buttons' screw that, even the back hard button is unintuitive at times, better to put it all on the touch screen.

A badly designed interface will still be hiding desirable features behind an impenetrable "menu" option, only now you have to use the capacitive touch screen in order to reach it. The physical button was at least consistent and easier to press (or at least, on my device).

If the menu button is unintuitive, that might be indicative that a redesign has to take place, rather than that the menu button concept is broken. I don't see what advantage this change has?

The difference is - when the menu is on the UI then you KNOW there are menu options available. The hard menu concept is broken because hitting the hard menu key is a crap shoot, it might do something, it might not, who knows. The problem is also developers like you think normal users think like them, they don't. Google has obviously figured this out, though pretty late in the game.

Ugh are they really using the market app's home screen as a good example? I think it's such a overly cluttered UI.

I gotta say that this change makes me feel a little funny. I use Android after switching from an iPhone, I like Android and I like the menu button. Further, I understand that there are relatively few ways to do what needs to be done to support application options. Further, further, I understand that Apple and Android have blatantly lifted bits from each other. But isn't this a near pixel-perfect copy of iOS's options buttons? I was kinda happy when iOS stole Android's notifications behavior because I could feel a little superior for using Android. Now they're stolen something else from iOS, I feel a little less superior.

And I realize these are big mean companies, but still I can root for one of them...

iOS's option buttons? No, not at all. They're a near-pixel perfect copy of Windows Phone's option bars:

http://mobileworld.appamundi.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__k...

Ah. By which I meant: http://www.idownloadblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Musi...

Looks very similar to: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u-3KNfy5n9M/TyG235X2rGI/AAAAAAAABH... and http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KIyVJ4DBLdw/TyGbNsLn4hI/AAAAAAAABF... albeit with orientation or location changes.

That's not an option button on iOS. It leads to a menu of 'secondary' menu items, that are hierarchically on the same level as the other tabs.

I might have a different perspective as I began using Android with Ice Cream Sandwich. I'm not used to apps having a menu button, and those that have one (or an "overflow" widget) seem much clunkier than those that don't use one. The worst are the ones with some sort of "More" button from within the menu.

Sometimes we think what we are used to is easier, when perhaps it is not.

It's impossible to scroll on the linked page using the Kindle Fire browser, a disappointing discovery given that it uses Android.

It's also impossible to scroll on Firefox 9 on a MacBook. Very frustrating.

Replacing Menu button with "..." does nothing. The actions will continue to be hidden. All possible actions should be visible. If there are too many actions, then it is a sign to redesign. Creating a bucket for putting misc. actions will make them less discover-able.

They should replace the useless History button with the Options menu button.

But then again, Matias doesn't think of Android OS as an app platform, but rather a portable web platform. So they don't think about app menus, they're thinking page navigation.

The biggest mistake here is that it's now impossible to use text to explain what each button means. I'm afraid that with a lot of apps there will be features that do not map to an obvious icon, leaving users with the dreaded old "Mystery Meat" navigation.

Soon they will do away with the back button, the search button, and leave only the home button.

Where have I seen this before?

I hope not--the back button really makes it all possible.

I concur. The back button is the single greatest feature of Android. I do not understand why they're removing the menu button. Personally, I think it's a terrible decision for all the reasons listed here; however, the greatest feature that Android had over iPhone, period, were multitasking and the back button. Both of those features did, and continue to work hand in hand to make it a pleasant experience.

Now if only they could kill the "Do random thing" (back) button as well

How do you get it to do a random thing? For me, it goes back.

The dedicated menu button made navigation in every app not only intuitive but consistent. One of the things that absolutely infuriated me about iOS was playing a game of "Find the settings/back/exit/etc. button" in every single app. The best part is realizing the app's developer didn't include the option you're looking for after 10 minutes of searching, which would be obvious if you tapped the menu button once in Android.

As a Galaxy Nexus user, it's the one feature of my original Droid that I miss the most. Google's "If it ain't broke, break it" strategy is really getting on my nerves lately.

It's not consistent because sometimes the hard menu button shows something and sometimes it doesn't, no one knows. It's also not intuitive that feature xyz is accessed by the menu key. The user has to look for feature xyz, get frustrated, and press the hard menu button as the last resort in their annoying search for it.

Off-screen buttons ruin the "touch the app" magic of touchscreen direct interaction.

The screen is the app and the app is the screen. Therefore, any button outside the screen is not part of the app!

BTW, I used to agree with you but experience changed my mind: I once used an Android timer app for months without pressing the menu button.

Is it possible to say goodbye to all the buttons and replace them with UI gestures?

Is it possible to go back to phones with physical buttons? When it was obvious where to press, and not a guessing game?

There's some advantage with not having physical buttons.

Most notably you can quickly "cancel" an intended action with a non-physical button by sliding your finger away from it while holding down.

e.g. you're playing a game and accidentally press the home button. slide away to continue playing. You can't do that with a physical button unless they implement something where holding the button down causes a less intrusive action. iOS does this i believe by not exiting the app but bringing up the multitasking menu when you hold down the home button.

I currently have a thinkpad tablet with physical buttons, and I'm afraid of using them half the time because of accidentally hitting them.

I don't understand how a gestural interface would become a guessing game any more than physical buttons would be. Regardless whether your interface be gestural or physical certain actions would presumably do different things depending on the current context. Instead of remembering to press a particular button, one would remember a particular gesture.

Unless you are talking about guessing whether your gesture was recognized.

What gesture means "navigate from here to home and avoid tolls"? http://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/gui-programmer.html

It's not a matter of gestures insomuch as using the multi-touch screen effectively.

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