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Android's 'hamburger' menus are making a comeback, but I hope it's a short one
Google's mixing navigation paradigms, and it's confusing
Last month, Google Messages users noticed a new UI element cropping up, though one that's decidedly old-school. An icon comprising three horizontal lines in the upper left-hand corner — a menu button — has appeared. I see it on my own phone now. Tapping it slides out a familiar panel of options from somewhere beyond the left edge of the screen. More recently, a similar — though non-functional — button popped up in Google Photos, marking two Google apps to revive the so-called hamburger menu just this year. It might seem like a minor thing, but I hate to see it. And I'll tell you why.
If you cruise by the Android developer site with any frequency, you may have noticed that it looks a little different. There aren't a lot of tiny individual adjustments, but rather two immediately obvious changes to the look and layout.
Tucked in yesterday's post about Android Support Library v23.2 were a couple of screenshots, posted on the Android Developer's Blog, of an unreleased Android version. How do we know? Because there's a hamburger button in the Bluetooth settings section, a button that doesn't exist on Marshmallow, but that we're able to confirm is there on Android N.
Chrome's URL bar is so fast that I generally don't even bother with bookmarks anymore, but those who do might have noticed that they look a little different lately. In the latest version of the Chrome stable build for Android, there's a new user-selectable flag that can enable or disable a different interface for the Bookmarks manager. It can be enabled (or disabled, if you prefer) in the Flags settings page: chrome://flags/#enhanced-bookmarks-experiment.
Adoption of material design appears to be on an upward trend. It seems that every few days we hear news about another app refreshing its design with some inspiration from Google's new aesthetic, with some apps using the design language at launch. This is great for users who have been hungry for a more unified, cohesive design language on Android.
In a rather exciting post to its Google Design Google+ page today, Google announced a big set of improvements to the material design guidelines. The design spec, which - since this summer - has been a "preview," has been updated with links to relevant Android developer documentation, a new section called "What is Material?" a "What's new" section (to stay up to date on any changes), and a couple of other exciting changes.
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.
After its update to 5.0 on iOS about a week ago, Pocket has been upgraded for Android as well. I'm a long-time user of Pocket, and while my use case is probably different from the typical user's (there are probably only about 10 items in my list at any given time), it's clear to me that Pocket is always trying to find new ways to make simple save-and-read functionality better and more convenient. To that end, Pocket's new update offers users a new "Highlights" selection, which will pull and organize the best stories from your list, placing them in categories like "quick reads," or sorting by source, trending status, or subject matter (like "#photography"). Pocket says that the highlights feature can learn and adapt to your habits in the app, making for better selections.
If your device hasn't gotten the YouTube v5 update today yet, and you're just itching to see the new navigation and UI, and experience the in-app multitasking first hand, we have your fix down below. Simply flash this verified APK to your phone or tablet, and your YouTube app will suddenly look better than ever before.
Google has started rolling out a staged YouTube for Android update, and it's probably the biggest redesign the app has seen yet. We've gotten a hold of the APK with exact version 5.0.21 (the previous version is 4.5.17), and after playing with it for about 30 minutes so far, I can definitively say that it's hugely improved.
If you're a fan of the new slide-out menu that has slowly been making its way into all of Google's official apps and also like to watch movies/TV shows, today's your lucky day! Play Movies just got a sizeable update that not only brings said menu, but also a sleeker look and a couple of new features:
Download: New Gmail For Android v4.5 With Slide-Out Navigation And Brand New Inbox
The new Gmail is here, very slowly rolling out thanks to staged rollouts that may take a few weeks to complete. Thankfully, we already have the APK, and
The new Gmail is here, very slowly rolling out thanks to staged rollouts that may take a few weeks to complete. Thankfully, we already have the APK, and it's only a quick download away. The version number is 4.5-694836, and it's beautiful. Gogogo grab it!