Mile Zero

June 8, 2010

Everything's Heavy

The default Android homescreen is a generally pleasant piece of software. It's easy to rearrange, hosts widgets for quick access to information, and has a fun parallax effect when you pan between "desktops." Add a handpainted Legend of Zelda wallpaper, and you've got yourself a classy launcher.

That said, I have two minor issues with it. First, if it's killed by the system (say, because the browser is hogging all the RAM), it can take a few seconds to restart itself. Second, it clears the activity stack when you load it, so the Back button becomes useless for multitasking. The Activity Stack/Back button combo is one of the best things about Android: together with the pull-down notification bar and the powerful Intent system, it lets users address incoming events without losing their place. Take, for example, this typical activity path:

1. Launch Twitter client. Follow link to:
2. Open blog post in browser.
3. Get a message via GChat. Click notification to open chat window, type a reply, and press back button to return to the browser.
4. The blog post links to a YouTube video. Click to open in YouTube client.
5. Mid-video, receive incoming e-mail notification. Jump over to the e-mail application to read and reply, then press the back button to return to YouTube.
6. Press back to finish reading blog post.
7. Press back to continue browsing Twitter stream.

What you can't do out of the box is directly jump from one program to another (say from Text Edit to a Wikipedia entry) and back, because the Home screen will clear the Activity Stack. Instead you have to return to the launcher every time--way too slow for an alt-tab junkie like myself. One way to address this is to use one of the many utilities like Launchpad or Barcontrol to put links to favorite programs in the notification space. I've done this for a while, and it works, but it's clumsy (particularly compared to the elegant model used by the Palm Pre) and it means there's less room for actual notifications.

A better way would be if there were a way to augment the Home button as a kind of "quick launch" key, one that doesn't destroy the Activity stack. That's what my first Android program, Underground, does. It's not a full Home screen replacement, but a color-coded list of your favorite applications triggered by the Home button for fast, effortless multitasking. Think of it as a subway system for your phone.

I'll be putting it in the Android Market in the next day or so, but in the meantime you can grab the installation package here (don't forget to enable "Unknown sources" in the "Applications" section of your device settings). It's small: less than 50KB when installed. I'm also making the source available, in case anyone feels like tweaking it.

After installation, there won't be an icon in the application drawer. Instead, press the Home key. Android should ask what program you want to use to respond to the event, Home or Underground. Choose Underground to start using it. I also recommend clicking the checkbox to use Underground by default--don't worry, you can still get to the old Home screen, and you can always reset this in the "Manage Applications" section of your device settings.

When you start it for the first time, Underground has three items onscreen: a sample link to the web browser, "add new," and "home." You can choose "home," or press the hardware Home key again, to return to the default Home screen. To put your own favorite applications on the list, choose "add new" and pick one from the list (be patient: it takes a few seconds to find them all the first time). You can also long-press on a list item to change its tag color or to remove it from the list. Most importantly, just tap on an application's name to switch to that activity--Underground will quietly remove itself from the stack, so that the Back button will return you directly to your previous task.

That's all there is! Simple, fast, and effective multitasking in a memory-conscious package, without removing what was already great about Android's Home. I'm not much of a designer, so I've left it pretty simple: bold colors, nice big fonts, and liberal use of the platform's long-press interaction model. But that doesn't mean it couldn't stand some improvement: feel free to leave feedback here in the comments.

Notes on Programming for Android

It's extraordinarily impressive how easy this project was. Granted, it's a Java API, and after a couple of years in dynamic languages it feels like a real regression to go back to strict static typing, no first-class functions, and a million subclasses. And of course, it's not like this was an incredibly ambitious project. But for all that, Google has made working on Android about as simple as it could be. I've particularly grown fond of the XML-based layout tool and the package resource system, which makes it easy to build little chunks of UI (like tagged list cells) and pass them in to the view builders. If only S60 had been this easy!

And of course, it says a great deal about the openness of the platform they've built that I can literally take over from the preinstalled program manager (and that I was able to refer to its source code when I got stuck on a few tricky bits). All in all, it was a great experience, and I'm looking forward to working on a few more Android projects when I get the chance. Suggestions?

Future - Present - Past