Hi
I've played a little with the free version of Locus yesterday and went for a paid one straight ahead. The multitude of features and options looks very promising and I'm eager to test them in the field. For one, I'm very happy it supports SQLite DB as I got a little bit tired of waiting for the Maverick developer to implement SQLite map storage engine as the "thousands and thousands of small tile files" approach seems completely unacceptable to me.
But there's one thing I don't particularly like in Locus: the user interface. It's full of custom UI objects, inconsistent with the Android developers' guidelines and established standards of how certain things should look and behave. For me, the overall "look and feel" of the app is much reminiscent of the "Windows shareware"-type applications from few years ago where each and every program made by small independent developers introduced its own unique UI concepts. I can understand that for the developer there's a desire to do everything his own way which he believes serves his project the best. But for me as an average user it looks a little messy. The behavior and look of the menu accessed with a "Menu" button is nonstandard, there are some strange shadows under the windows, there are Windows-style "close" controls in the windows' corners (you don't have these anywhere else in Android!), and so on, and so on. I'd personally much rather have a standard Android experience there, consistent with what I'm used to see in majority of Android apps.
Best regards and keep up the great work
Zbig
I've played a little with the free version of Locus yesterday and went for a paid one straight ahead. The multitude of features and options looks very promising and I'm eager to test them in the field. For one, I'm very happy it supports SQLite DB as I got a little bit tired of waiting for the Maverick developer to implement SQLite map storage engine as the "thousands and thousands of small tile files" approach seems completely unacceptable to me.
But there's one thing I don't particularly like in Locus: the user interface. It's full of custom UI objects, inconsistent with the Android developers' guidelines and established standards of how certain things should look and behave. For me, the overall "look and feel" of the app is much reminiscent of the "Windows shareware"-type applications from few years ago where each and every program made by small independent developers introduced its own unique UI concepts. I can understand that for the developer there's a desire to do everything his own way which he believes serves his project the best. But for me as an average user it looks a little messy. The behavior and look of the menu accessed with a "Menu" button is nonstandard, there are some strange shadows under the windows, there are Windows-style "close" controls in the windows' corners (you don't have these anywhere else in Android!), and so on, and so on. I'd personally much rather have a standard Android experience there, consistent with what I'm used to see in majority of Android apps.
Best regards and keep up the great work
Zbig