Material 3 Design

[Ismael034]

Hi @butzist @drogga

I have been working in a Material 3 design for the app. I have also introduced new features in the design that will need to be implemented in code. I have redesigned the main Activity with the list of apps to choose from. This new design drops support for kitkat (Almost 9 year old OS) though. From Lolipop to the lastest version looks good. I would like to hear som opinion from you and see if I can continue with the redesign. Here are som screenshots:

Thanks!

[drogga]

I can't say I like it, because this looks more like yet another app manager, than a simple activity launcher that it was meant to be and now seems overcomplicated with pointless and unnecessary themes and I especially don't like the fact that it will require 5.0+ and the size will grow - for waht!?, just because of theme, especially when I already couple of times gave an example of simple string changing that makes it dark by default, which looks awesome, I don't understand why would a power/advanced tech savvy user would want to use it in white color and would want a heavy app that keeps complicating the UI, instead of simplifying it and on top of that keeps pointlessly and unnecessarily drops support for older OS versions, no matter how old they are...
(for example, take a look at MiXplorer - still to this day supports Android 2.2, also other competitors and alternatives of A. L. still support 4.0/4.1)

OP - nothing personal or against you, that's just my opinion, so let that not discourage you ;)

BTW - the "Recents" is probably pointless (that's why it was removed), but what's in the "Settings" tab?

[Ismael034]

Hi @drogga

This was just an Idea. Thats why I asked first in the Discussions tab before continuing with the design. I based the design on #104. In terms on the drop of Kitkat thats not really an issue as I could get it working fine with a few changes. The recents and settings tab you see in the bottom bar are just Proof of concepts. Nothing has been implemented but I thought a Recets tab would be useful. The settings tab would be for selecting a specific theme. The about page, a settings to show /dont show root activities and so on.

As I said this was just a POC so if you dont like this design I have no issues at all.

Thanks!

Edit: btw butzist has created a gitter chat. Here its is the link if you want to join for a more fluent communication https://gitter.im/ActivityLauncher/community

[drogga]

No thanks, I saw it and your conversation with him there, but I have no interest in using one another place to do the same that can and already is done here...

[butzist]

I like being able to discuss development in real-time

[drogga]

For me this is in real time / live discussion, that's why I suggested this Discussions tab, that's exactly what it's meant for.
No need for external sites or platforms
(I don't use preparatory apps, but a browser, for me this is "live" as it gets.).

[Ismael034]

@drogga

May I ask what are you currently looking in terms of the redesign? It would be awesone to have an example or anything because It seems that I didnt understand it well

[drogga]

If that concept is done entirely in a image editor and a actual .apk with it doesn't exist, then I can imaging how much time it must've took you to create it...

If you can, pls try instead to remove the context menu dots from the parent app, they are unnecessary there, should show only on and for the activities themselves, which would look nice in red color for the private ones and maybe even blue for the regular ones, I'm only suggesting this color idea, because it looks like we are back to complicated theming with AndroidX AppCompat dependencies, around a 1 MB of a .apk and so on.

I don't think that it needs any redesgn, my example/mod of 1.9.2 is everything that I want it to look like, plus to show all the possible activities, which would've been nice if I could add that to it, IDK if I want anything else to be added, different than those suggestions/ideas that I already shared in the issues tickets.

[butzist]

@Ismael034 I'm looking for more clarity and usability in the app. I suggest replacing all context menus with separate pages, that show details about the package/activity. On those pages we can then have the actions as buttons and properly explain that a private activity might be possible to start without root.

[Ismael034]

Hey @drogga

What do you think of the settings feature? Do you like it? Would you add/remove any setting? Do you find it useful? I would like to know your opinion on this.
Don't find necessary to create a new discussion for this so reusing the existing one 😉

Thanks!

[drogga]

It's ok and useful (I guess), I wouldn't remove or add anything there, at least for now and I don't currently have any suggestions regarding that screen/menu and its options/preferences.

Tho:
You can try to color the NavBar, depending on the theme, it's always white, except while loading.
Before I could fix the orientation to not refresh the view and collapse the expanded, by setting it to "unspecified" and adding configChanges="orientation", but that worked on 1.13.5 Build 29 when I last tested the builds, now it doesn't work.
Before it used to show app's icon on most of the activities and the app name on them, now if a icon and label/name is not configured for the activity it just shows it/them without a app name, but with a .ACTIVITY ID (the last part of the class) and with a generic android icon, I guess that's actually the right way to show them, but I'm not sure, or used to see them like this, so I'm leaving that one you two to decide.
I liked it more when private (padlock icon) activities were greyed out (diff. tint), but butzist didn't liked them like this unfortunately...
It still doesn't seem to show/list the disabled ones and it continues to list the icon name when searching (you have samsung - search for "shortcut" and expand the settings app, you will see 3 activities, the first one called "Change home" shouldn't be shown under this filter and the only reason it is, is because its icon name contains the word "shortcut" in it).
The first toast message while creating shortcut is annoying (IDK if it's a system thing).
When searching/filtering the app's activities aren't auto-expanded, but a count of how many are there can be added.
Dragging/sliding the fast scroll bar can be made to show the letter, like how the Activity Manager (by sdex) does, or when scrolling through the phone's contacts and the slider (handler) can be made bigger or a custom one can be used, because it's really hard to "grab it" on curved/edge screens/displays.
Apps without a app_name but only with a package name (like the 2 system ones I see on lineage "com.android.backupconfirm" & "com.android.wallpapercropper") are shown on bottom of the list, instead among/between the others that start with "C", "tTorrent" is there for some reason as well, probably because those start with lowercase letters ? - IDK...
The activities loading speed should definitely be worked on, it's too slow when cleared from recents/force stopped.

That's it from me, I don't have time to test the weekly builds, so forgive me that I included everything at once here, even tho most of the things I already mentioned before.

[Ismael034]

Thanks for testing!

There are definitely some bugs in the beta release. I like the idea of making the slider bigger and showing the letter. In my samsung phone with a curved display its extremely difficult to use the slider. We are also thinking ways of make everyting load faster but that will be implemented for the next big release.

I have also thought of include step when clicking the package activity. So intead of launching the activity, show another screen mostly about explaining more things to the user. Ie why is there a lock icon, why do I get an error when I try to run the activity anyway, Include warning that private activity might not start without root, to be able to include the shotcut , etc... I am not sure if that gonna improve the UX or its gonna make it worse. Asking for your opinion on that or how would you do to explain what I mentioned earlier to the users without a lot of AlertDialogs for example.

Thanks!

[Ismael034]

Also, can you open an issue of this when you have some time? "You can try to color the NavBar, depending on the theme, it's always white, except while loading." I am not able to reproduce it. My NavBar goes white in Light theme and black in the Black theme.

Thanks!

[drogga]

TBH I'm not a fan of the additional steps, maybe if you ignore my opinion and add those anyway, at least make sure to make them (hints and tips) show only the first time and never again, or even better - add Q&A section at the very bottom of the settings screen (you can also export the activity).

It would be useful if App Info entry can be added to the context menu (as last option), but not for the activities...

The "Light" theme option should be renamed to "White" as it's exactly and literally that (there's no "Black" theme, but "Dark" gray/grey - different things).
NavBar color - Maybe it's an issue with older OS versions only, those tests were made on SGS8+ with A.9 Pie...
I also just noticed (since my OS/Devices theme are globally and always set to night/dark) that only with the White theme (which I never use) the status bar has a white-gray/grey color on the same device and OS ver, similar to how it was blue before...