Re: Skins for Android, Surface and other tablets

This section is for announcements, information and discussions relating to the help community -- for example news about events and seminars of interest, developments in help technology and so on.

Moderator: Tim Green

Post Reply
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23156
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Re: Skins for Android, Surface and other tablets

Unread post by Tim Green »

I am frequently asked why I have not yet developed specific skins for Android, Microsoft Surface etc. Here's why:

http://chitika.com/insights/2013/june-tablet-update

Basically, nobody is using them. That one Android user may complain very loudly, but he's on his own. Also, browsers on Android were incapable of displaying WebHelp at all until very recently. The very latest ones can now just about handle scrolling regions so that they can display a TOC and a topic at the same time, but they are still badly broken in many other problematic ways. In particular, unlike Safari on the iPad and IE on the Microsoft Surface, Android browsers provide incorrect and inconsistent information about screen dimensions, so it is often impossible to automatically set up a layout that correctly matches the screen size and resolution. This wouldn't be a problem on the Microsoft Surface, but nobody is using it -- Microsoft just had to write off nearly a billion dollars in unsold Surface devices and their usage is less than 0.5%, compared to 84% for the iPad. That is not exactly a runaway success.

Despite all this I'm still working on a set of universal responsive skins that will work automatically on desktop, tablet and smartphone browsers without a need for different versions for different devices. However, it's likely that the experience won't be as good on Android, for the simple reason that Android browsers aren't that good. Also, Android 4.0 or higher will be an absolute requirement. All versions of Android before that are out of the question, the browsers on those versions lack all the features needed for WebHelp.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
Post Reply