Flash v android 3.70

[1eyedjack]

Following the major upheaval in the android interface recently (which, incidentally, is growing on me, as I suspected it would after the initial shock, despite the slightly mis-shapen cards), it did rather highlight to my mind some wastage in the Flash display.

 

To recap, with the Android interface, in the interests of catering for those with small screens (ie phones), they have pared to the bone those parts of the display that are not really required, in the interests of maximising the proportion of the screen that is taken up by your own hand and your own bids, so that the fat-fingered among us can tap reliably on the intended target. This means that the display jumps around a bit depending on context, ie when dummy is faced.

 

With the Flash interface we have a (pretty much) completely static display format, with the four players allotted a fixed area of screen, sufficient to display all their cards regardless of whether or not those cards are visible at any given instant, but with that area greyed out when their cards are hidden. Despite that this interface may typically be used on machines with substantial screen size, and which historically are likely to have keyboards attached, this does seem to be a bit of a waste of screen space, UNLESS having a static screen display format is so valuable to the user that it trumps all other considerations.

 

With the emergence of Windows tablets, I expect that we are going to get increasing numbers of player using devices with mid-range screen sizes like my Samgsung Note but which are Flash-enabled, and who would rather use the Flash interface which is frankly streets ahead of the mobile interface in terms of functionality, but in such cases may also want to have the redundant parts of the screen "shrunk" in favour of the more relevant aspects, as has been attempted with the current mobile interface.

 

Just my tuppence.