Hi. I'm new to Android from iOS; I've only tried it a handful of times, all over the course of the last couple of months, and I recognize that I don't give it the chance it deserves and go to hard on it for being different in areas I'm used to iOS for. I understand that this comes across as a rant, but I feel there's enough legitimate criticism here to separate it from just being a new users inability to adapt to an unfamiliar system. I've got to emphasize that when I say "love" in the title, I really do mean it, because a universal back button's such a useful tool for an operation that takes multiple steps if you want to re-do it otherwise. I easily understand why Android users for years have complained about it's absence upon moving to (or having to use) iOS.
The problem is less about what the feature can do and more about what it prevents… the web browser's forward button. The one place where those back and forward buttons are not just a nice-to-have that departs from other operating systems, but are actually crucial parts of how I use the tool. See, if you pull up a Mac, Windows, iPad (yes I tried this just to emphasize my point), or Linux machine with a trackpad, you'll go back in a browser by swiping from the left to the right, and you'll go forward by swiping from the right to left. On touch devices, iOS, iPad, and Windows devices all let you go forward and back in a similar fashion. Note how literally every platform does this in a universal, standardized way.
Unfortunately, Android's dual-sided back gesture gets in the way of this, so browsers can not implement it. I've got to turn off gesture navigation and use 3 button navigation in order to make it work the way it does everywhere else, and I don't want to do that. With gesture navigation on, going forward's done by pressing the browser's built in forward button… which is at least one menu layer deep. If this seems like a non-issue to you, take a step back and compare it to how it's done on a desktop system: ideally, for the fastest way you'll have a mouse with buttons for navigation or a trackpad. That way, it's just a button press or a swipe. Easy. But if you don't, you'll take your cursor up to the top corner and click the button. That's already very slow for most people, which is why power users will have a good mouse or trackpad setup. But this… this is the equivalent of having to click a drop down menu before you can click the actual button for forward. No one would tolerate that many clicks to do something so common on a desktop, because it's stupid slow.
What's more is that the back/forward buttons on Android aren't always feature-par to the same button on the same browsers in other systems: they don't give you a drop down/up of the previous sites you've navigated to. If you want to go back say 4 times, you'll have to press the button that many times. This isn't always the case (like Firefox does give you the drop down) but it's missing even in the default Chrome.
So ultimately, despite loving so many other elements of the operating system, I find it hard to move to Android because of how the most powerful general purpose applications on any OS—web browsers—are crippled on it. I'm curious to see what others make of this and if they too find this paradigm a bit ridiculous, or if they don't/wouldn't mind that Android does things differently from everyone else or think they need to change at all.
The problem is less about what the feature can do and more about what it prevents… the web browser's forward button. The one place where those back and forward buttons are not just a nice-to-have that departs from other operating systems, but are actually crucial parts of how I use the tool. See, if you pull up a Mac, Windows, iPad (yes I tried this just to emphasize my point), or Linux machine with a trackpad, you'll go back in a browser by swiping from the left to the right, and you'll go forward by swiping from the right to left. On touch devices, iOS, iPad, and Windows devices all let you go forward and back in a similar fashion. Note how literally every platform does this in a universal, standardized way.
Unfortunately, Android's dual-sided back gesture gets in the way of this, so browsers can not implement it. I've got to turn off gesture navigation and use 3 button navigation in order to make it work the way it does everywhere else, and I don't want to do that. With gesture navigation on, going forward's done by pressing the browser's built in forward button… which is at least one menu layer deep. If this seems like a non-issue to you, take a step back and compare it to how it's done on a desktop system: ideally, for the fastest way you'll have a mouse with buttons for navigation or a trackpad. That way, it's just a button press or a swipe. Easy. But if you don't, you'll take your cursor up to the top corner and click the button. That's already very slow for most people, which is why power users will have a good mouse or trackpad setup. But this… this is the equivalent of having to click a drop down menu before you can click the actual button for forward. No one would tolerate that many clicks to do something so common on a desktop, because it's stupid slow.
What's more is that the back/forward buttons on Android aren't always feature-par to the same button on the same browsers in other systems: they don't give you a drop down/up of the previous sites you've navigated to. If you want to go back say 4 times, you'll have to press the button that many times. This isn't always the case (like Firefox does give you the drop down) but it's missing even in the default Chrome.
So ultimately, despite loving so many other elements of the operating system, I find it hard to move to Android because of how the most powerful general purpose applications on any OS—web browsers—are crippled on it. I'm curious to see what others make of this and if they too find this paradigm a bit ridiculous, or if they don't/wouldn't mind that Android does things differently from everyone else or think they need to change at all.
Last edited:
