Behavior of back button/key

[vinzv]

When I search for something and I want to go back to main timeline the back button/key closes AndStatus despite going back as expected. Same thing for going back from Mentions to main timeline.
I think that's no big problem but a bit confusing compared to other (social networking) apps.

[yvolk]

Actually a User has a clue when he is on a Home screen: no Up button on an Action bar.
But I agree that maybe we should have a "Default Timeline" as suggested in #236, and Back button would return to this timeline first?!

[yvolk]

BTW, Back and Up buttons are not the same...
Edited: see https://developer.android.com/design/patterns/navigation.html

[clacke]

Agree, back button should go back from current view state to previous view state. If I change the view state and back button closes the app, that's confusing -- especially when in a "custom" mode like search. I have closed AndStatus many times due to this.

[yvolk]

@clacke I recently thought about allowing the Timeline Activity to have multiple instances. The main problem, which we may face in that case, will be "Out of memory" error.
Anyway, I will definitely try this. Now I'm redoing Timeline content loaders #313 , so this change, maybe as an option, looks like natural...

[yvolk]

I think that we don't need multiple instances of a Timeline. We could just remember a history of timeline switching. And go back that history (switching in reverse direction...)

[bulletbites]

I just posted #356 which is pretty much the same issue. Is it not possible to have a "home/back-option with the home setting being the default TL position?

[ghost]

referred of #422

Yes, I think we mean the same.

I summarize again:

This symbol is above if I am the start time line on. on the left:

I have this back arrow at many but not all undersides:

It would simplify the navigation very much if this arrow on every underside existed.

[yvolk]

@b2410 What you show on your screenshots is "Up" button, which is about navigation in a hierarchy of views (e.g. navigation from a Conversation view to a Timeline).
"Back" button is (usually) a hardware button below the device's display. That button is about history of navigation between views (e.g. history of switching between different timelines of AndStatus).

Please read this carefully: https://developer.android.com/design/patterns/navigation.html (I did this right now...)

Taking that Android guidelines and terminology into account I think that "Up" button, which you showed above, works correctly (at least in most cases...).
What definitely needs to be improved - the dedicated (usually hardware) "Back" button, which generally looks like this:

or like this (onscreen Back button):

[ghost]

Excuses my mistake. I have never noticed the difference.

It is working now as described in the link. But on the user timeline is the problem that the "up" button not exit and the "back" button close andstatus.

[yvolk]

Implemented in v.30.00. Please test: the Open Beta testing channel https://play.google.com/apps/testing/org.andstatus.app

[ghost]

@yvolk It functions perfectly. Thank you.

[yvolk]

@b2410 Actually the change was trivial. Why I didn't do this earlier: I was afraid that this would cause out of memory issues. Please report if you have them after this change.

[ghost]

@yvolk I test it 5 days without problems. The app or the phone was not restarted. More Ram is not required.

[yvolk]

@b2410 Thank you for the feedback!