I find there are a number times when navigation is problematic on WP7, caused by a few design issues:
- there being a back button but no forward button
- apps always start from home page when loaded from the home screen
- IE relies on the hardware back button and you can lose your navigation history if you leave IE, go back in and try to navigate back.
I think most WP7 users will know what I'm talking about.
My question is - do people think the Mango update with multitasking will solve this? I can't see enough detail in the online demos to be sure, but I would hope that it does get around these issues.
I'm sure that with Mango's fast app switcher (the new tap-and-hold back button) you will have much more flexibility than today.
But, I'm not sure what you mean by "you lose your navigation history" in IE. Even if I back out of IE, when I go back in, tap the favorites icon, and flick to the History pivot, I still see all of the pages I visited in the list. Maybe I am doing something different, or else I am misunderstanding your problem.
i think he meant...
1: go browse using ie, and visit several pages by following links
2: press windows key to go back to homescreen
3: launch ie again (through its tile, not the back button)
4: history gone. you'll be back to the last page you were visiting, but that's it. if you press the back button, it'll take you out of ie and into the homescreen.
this annoys me as well.
Website A,
click link to B,
check emails,
return to IE (via back button),
on website B,
want to go back to A: not possible via back button
It is unintuitive to open favorites(!) then change to history only to go one site backwards.
Yep that's the scenario exactly.
I checked what Android does because it has a very similar setup of a hardware back button. However, they get it right and the solution is very simple.
On Android when you go back into the browser, the hardware back button takes you back through browser history until there is no more history. Then the next press takes you back in the application screen history. I only tried it quickly but it seems to solve the problem that WP7 exhibits.
I think the only foolproof option is like iOS where the back button is onscreen and part of the application. The downside is that it clutters up the display a lot. When I use an iPhone now the actual screen space for the application seems very small.
BlitterTwisted said:
- apps always start from home page when loaded from the home screen
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That's changing in Mango. Developers will be able to allow users to pin pages in their app to the home screen not just the app itself.
The example shown at MIX11 was that if we create a News app which has a world news page, a country specific news page and a financial page (for example); the user could then pin the financial page to the start screen.
There is no limit on the amount of tiles per app, so the user could chose to pin all three pages to their start screen. Clicking on any of these tiles would take them straight to the page of interest not the main page.
Of course, this requires app developers to implement the new tiles in their app (but it's not difficult).
Casey
That is interesting, although you're talking more about linking within an app, where sometimes the issue is more about remembering state i.e. reloading an app and it being back on the page you were on.
To be fair, support for this on iOS is patchy, some apps do it and some don't. And the MS guidelines specifically say that the app must restart from home when loaded from a tile. I wonder if this was in preparation for the multitasking features, although I will still like to be able to use a tile to launch an already-running (tombstoned) app and have it take me back to where I was when I left it. From what I've seen of Android, it does this.
Not sure what everyone is complaining about the back button and IE since it's actually pretty consistent with desktop browser experience. When you close your browser and open it up again, you don't get to press back.
digger1985 said:
Not sure what everyone is complaining about the back button and IE since it's actually pretty consistent with desktop browser experience. When you close your browser and open it up again, you don't get to press back.
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that's the point. in your phone you don't close your brower (by pressing back back until you're at the homescreen, you just press the middle button to pull up the home screen). in my desktop I can have 10 browers open, and still open my e-mail without disturbing my browers.
Mestiphal said:
that's the point. in your phone you don't close your brower (by pressing back back until you're at the homescreen, you just press the middle button to pull up the home screen). in my desktop I can have 10 browers open, and still open my e-mail without disturbing my browers.
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Do I remember correctly that tabbed browsing is coming with IE9/Mango, and said tabs will be in the multitasking screen? I guess it could very well start working more like you described?
We will see in 2 days hopefully.
dtboos said:
Do I remember correctly that tabbed browsing is coming with IE9/Mango, and said tabs will be in the multitasking screen? I guess it could very well start working more like you described?
We will see in 2 days hopefully.
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That's interesting actually if they do that I can see it helping. Proving that when returning to a browser page, you can still use the back button to work the browser rather than just jumping back to where you were before.
If they're gonna carry on with the back button doing special stuff in the browser, they need to implement the Android trick of the back button going back through browser history until the start, then going back through application screen history.
I have had my phone for about a week now and everything is great. The one gripe I have is that I can't seem to get to the browser menu at all when I use the stock browser. Every time it will load the home page and show the address bar for a split second and then disappear. I will touch all over the screen and will be unable to make reappear. Anyone have any suggestions it's really annoying.
Thanks
Flick down and it will show up.
I have a Verizon Galaxy Nexus and after updating to Jelly Bean, my stock browser keeps going to the homepage. For example, if I'm browsing a webpage, and I get a text. I'll read the text and go back to the browser, it opens to the homepage, instead of staying on the page where I left. Similar happens even when I'm in the browser, I'll look through my bookmarks, and if I go back to the page was, it was load the homepage.
Is there a way to stop it from loading the homepage.
Another problem I have is, whenever I open an app (i.e. Bank of America app) and finish using it and close it. I'll be on the left most home screen and when I swipe to go the middle home screen, the screen will go to the right of the middle screen (4th screen). This doesn't happen with all the apps, only a few.
Please help.
As of today I have started to get a gray bar that appears on the bottom of my screen with a design that looks like a thumbprint on it. It covers the bottom part of my keyboard making the space and return keys completely inaccessible. The only way I've found to temporarily get rid of it is to restart my phone. Anyone know what this is?
hold home and swipe up to see if it goes away.
How about a screenshot? Install a new app recently?
I took a screenshot, and tried to post it with the initial question, but the forums won't let me post it since I have never commented here before.
No new apps, but I had just recently started using the car dock. It did it probably about 15 times that day, but hasn't done it since, and I didn't come back to look for answers until the next day.
Thanks for the responses, and if it happens again I'll try Tidbits suggestion and post if it works.
I have disabled Google Now (I did it on my previous m8 too). Its not something I use often, if at all, and especially back on the m8, swiping up and activing it by accident was irritating.
However, on the HTC10 after disabling google now, it seems to have been replaced with Firefox Search. Or rather, Adblock Search since I use Adblock Browser, which is basically just an adblock specific version of Firefox.
Basically, when you hold down on the home button/fingerprint sensor, when it would usually bring up google now, it instead brings up a search page.
It isnt the first time this has happened. I managed to disable the search thing when I was back on Stock ROM, but since installing a custom one, I've completley forgotten what it was I did.
AH! I've figured it out!
It is a setting burried in the menus. In the settings menu I just searched for the word "draw" as I have a feeling it might be something to do with "draw over other apps". It isnt, but it lead me to the right place. Under "Default Apps" is a setting called "Assist and Voice Input" and it is the selected "assist" app. Click that and select "None". Done. No more annoying pop up menus.