Liam Spradlin
Contributing since August, 2011
-
1523articles
Page 11
About Liam Spradlin
Liam loves Android, design, user experience, and travel. He doesn't love ill-proportioned letter forms, advertisements made entirely of stock photography, and writing biographical snippets.
Latest Articles
It goes without saying for most Android enthusiasts that the side-navigation drawer is a hot point of contention right now. With the introduction of material design, Google emphasized information hierarchy heavily, giving advice in its design specifications on how to arrange just about everything, including side navigation. According to the specifications (and Googler Roman Nurik), the "correct" behavior for the side drawer is to slide in as a sheet of paper over the entire canvas, including the app bar or toolbar.
We've been seeing bits and pieces (and fully functional prototypes) of Google Stars for a long time now. The tool, which for now acts as a replacement for Chrome's bookmark manager, has been in development even longer, but it looks like the Chrome extension might finally be ready to roll (assuming it doesn't get pulled again) as Google released "Bookmark Manager" to the Chrome Web Store earlier today.
Months ago, we posted a rumor about "modular actions" set to come to Google's Search app (now just called Google) along with "Ok Google Everywhere" functionality that would allow users to activate search from anywhere on their device. The latter has already been implemented, but Google is still inching toward the former. With the technically unreleased Google app, the search interface can overlay apps from which it is called, but Google today announced another step forward - the ability to let apps hook into search by accepting voice queries from the user.
Google's Inbox implements a really smart management paradigm - specifically, users can swipe in one direction to "snooze" a message (designating a time at which the message will reappear in the inbox), or swipe the other way to mark the message "done," essentially archiving it. Steve Albright, in a post to Google+, recently opined that this paradigm might find a good home among all of Android's notifications, rather than being confined to Inbox messages.
Good news! Those lucky individuals who are already using Inbox by Gmail, Google's latest comprehensive reimagining of email, are now able to invite three people to the service, just by hitting (or hovering over) the compose button (which Google calls "speed dial"). It's not clear if every user has received their allotment of three invites just yet, but Google says everyone can expect to get three invites "soon."
Today, Google officially announced Gmail Blue Inbox, a service we posted about just last night. Previously codenamed Bigtop, Inbox by Gmail is a full reimagining of how an email product should work, and how users should interact with their email.
Reaching "Inbox zero" is not an easy task. Especially when there are those emails that might require future action, or those that hang in a nebulous state of still being useful despite the conversation having ended. It's also not very easy to parse out exactly what you need to get done after poring over a page of emails. To address both of these issues (and a few others), Google has been working on a project called Bigtop. We've actually seen bits and pieces of Bigtop before in a leak from Geek.com, where the email system was positioned as belonging to a set of new Gmail features. We've got a bit more info (and a few visuals) that bring our current knowledge of Bigtop up to date, so let's get started.
We've already seen about a half-dozen Google apps leaked in a Nexus 6 system dump, but we haven't taken a look at Google Drive yet. The app does have some material design in store though - as with the others - it's still in testing, so anything could change. That said, it's worth taking a look. Google Drive has implemented many of the new material design paradigms that make the app cleaner, leaner, and easier to use.
Have you gotten tired of these app walkthroughs yet? Well, we have one more for right now - Google Play Books. The update to Google Play Books that we're looking at here is - like everything else - pre-release, meaning things could change a little or a lot before the app is actually released. But what we're seeing so far is a minor nudge for the app, bringing it into line with the rest of Google's apps.
Next up on our tour of (yet unreleased) Google app redesigns is Google Calendar. We actually got a glimpse of this redesign way back in April when Geek.com originally leaked the app as it was then. Since then, it seems that not a ton has changed, but we can get a more complete look at the app as it stands now.
Early this morning, we took a quick look at the onboarding video/process for Google's impending update to Gmail 5.0. The critical feature shown off in the video was the ability to handle all your email providers in one app, meaning users could access Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and others all from Google's singular Gmail app.
Continuing our journey through the new Google apps from Android 5.0 Lollipop, let's make a quick stop at Google Play Music. The update to this app has been anxiously awaited since it was demonstrated at Google I/O. And indeed, even Google's own product page for the Nexus 6 shows off some of the animations we've been salivating over for months.
Google Fit is something Google has been working diligently on since before its announcement at Google I/O. The service itself doesn't seem to be very well-rounded yet, but with a preview SDK available to developers for a few months and an app in the works, it seems like things are headed in the right direction.
Ever since we first took a look at Motorola's Nexus 6 (and subsequently saw it leaked and finally announced) there's been a question about that blue and white icon in the dock. We learned directly from Google that it would be a new app called Messenger, that sounds like it will - for all intents and purposes - replace the AOSP messaging app that used to appear on stock devices. But Google didn't give up many details about the app, outside the fact that it would be "specially designed to be a quick and easy way to send and receive SMS and MMS messages on Android," with more information forthcoming.
Google's been updating apps left and right recently to fall in line with its new material design philosophy, and the results have been impressive. There are a few apps it appears Google's saving for the final Lollipop release though - Gmail 5.0 among them.
Today was an extremely exciting day for Android fans. Besides brand new Lollipop preview images coming out, along with a new SDK and final APIs, some new hardware went up for pre-order. Specifically, the Nexus 9 and Nexus Player went up for sale ahead of launch, and the Nexus 6 listing was put up, but it's still not available to order just yet.
For a while now, we've been aware of an unreleased keyboard theme, shown off in screenshots of Google Chrome on the Play Store. Today, the Android 5.0 Lollipop developer preview brought us Google Keyboard 4.0 that carries both the Material Light and Dark themes. There's really not much to say about the themes that can't be communicated in images - they are similar to the keyboard included in the original dev preview, but now there's a light theme.
We've been waiting on a big update to Google's search app, having seen screenshots here and there that hinted at an updated design. With today's new Lollipop developer preview, the Google app's 4.0 incarnation was made available. We've got a download at the bottom of the post, but be sure to read the instructions first as getting this up and running on pre-L devices requires some extra fiddling. Also, you'll need to be rooted. Before that, though, let's do a quick walkthrough of the new design.
Rumor has it tomorrow is a big day for the Android world. Of course officially, Google hasn't made a peep about potential new devices, their announcement date, or Android's upcoming L incarnation, but we've heard plenty about the Nexus 6, Nexus 9 (and its accessories), and L itself.