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Comment by martythemaniak | Hacker News Reader

"Now imagine you're an app developer."

I am actually an android app developer and some of the comments here make me question how many others actually are, versus relying on second-hand bullshit.

While it's slightly harder than developing for a single device, it is quite manageable. Some examples:

- different screen resolutions: this means that you must rely on UI layouts or make your pixels in your graphics code relative. This is an issue the iPhone will have in the future as well, as they WILL eventually upgrade the resolution on that screen.

- different input methods: make sure both gestures/swipes/touches and key presses both map to the correct functions

- missing features: accelerometer, cameara, etc: check and Handle gracefully or refuse to work. iPhone developers have to deal with this as well, except they can only refuse to work (by specifying minimum OS version to install).

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Apple and Google have brought a lot of new people into our industry. There's going to be a learning curve, and it's going to be painful for all of us at first.

Forgive me, but do you work somewhere where you have access to what's coming down the Android pipeline? You're in for an unpleasant surprise.

Most of the devices I've seen are great by themselves. If I played with one in a store I'd want it. But as a group, when they're what my company has to target for distribution, things could get really ugly.

How? Android 1.6 seems to provide enough features for abstracting away the differences between current and near-future devices.

Practically; I was an early adopter for the HTC Magic. Despite that, all the apps designed for the G1 worked fine. I could even use Emacs in ConnectBot (ssh client) with the soft keyboard. Now that's abstraction!

I dont see why it would be hard to change the screen resolution on the fly, kinda like what desktop games do. Other apps can use fluid layouts to fit multiple resolutions.

When it comes to other features of the phone, e.g. camera or accelerometer, like one of the posters said- you'll have to do progressive enhancement. Intelligent web developers already know how to do this. You feature test, then you enable a particular feature. Its not all that difficult.

Fluid layouts are a reasonable compromise, but they mean a layout that's slightly "off" in many cases. Look at how GTK+ scales on different mobile devices, for instance.

It works, but it means giving up a lot of control, and the results tend to show it.

forgetting the fact that GTK is quite some years old and software has evolved. You really think it's impossible to have a scalable UI? Ever surfed the internet with different resolutions? Now imagine you don't have cross browser incompatibilities and a framework that behaves the same everywhere.

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