Streamlining Android Interfaces

During our Streaming Media Europe 2011 presentation on video challenges and opportunities for the Android OS, an audience member raised the question of UX (or user interface) designs being inconsistent.

As I showed in my presentation slides, and detailed in response to the audience members question, we had to add additional time into our testing methodology to compensate for the hodgepodge of UX designs—a problem that's consistently plagued the open-source operating system spread across dozens of handset manufacturers and hundreds of wireless service provider networks

Scott Main, lead tech writer for developer.android.com, put together an informative blog post ("Say Goodbye to the Menu Button") on the need for streamline interfaces.

The post was published on Tim Bray's blog and has garnered attention for the more consistent and, one hopes, minimalistic approach to Android interfaces .

Now that Ice Cream Sandwich is gaining steam—and not just for its use of Apple HTTP Live Streaming, or HLS—Main writes that it's time to retire the overused fourth wheel, the Menu button catch-all that impacts so many pre 3.0 Android device interfaces.

"If I had to put this whole post into one sentence," wrote Main, "it’d be [this]: Set targetSdkVersion to 14 and, if you use the options menu, surface a few actions in the action bar with showAsAction="ifRoom"."

It's about time we moved Android UX to a consistent approach, and eliminating the fallback Menu button is a good first step...

Why are fMP4 and MPEG-DASH so important?

Quote from a white paper Transitions just completed on fragmented MP4 (fMP4) and MPEG-DASH:

Proponents say that the Common File Format (CFF) and Common Encryption (CENC) scheme will represent two important steps toward large-scale online video distribution via adaptive delivery of fragmented elementary streams.


Since CFF can also be used outside of the bounds of UltraViolet, significant interoperability may also exist between UltraViolet disc-based playback and online video platforms, in much the same way that the DVD Forum’s published specifications for DVD playback guaranteed interoperability between DVD players. It’s not out of bounds to think of CFF as the DVD standard for the web.


To get a better understanding of the power of fragmented MP4, first look at the sidebar in the white paper on "combinatorial complexity" for which Netflix contributed a real-world example. Even without CFF and CENC, Netflix is proving the case that fMP4 scales much better than the HLS approach (with a far lower asset management impact).

The white paper has been several months in the making, starting first as separate concepts by two key companies in the streaming space: Adobe Systems and Microsoft Corporation. Each has their proprietary solutions, but both are committed to seeing fragmented MP4 (fMP4) offer a potentially viable alternative to legacy streaming solutions.

After several meetings, both companies chose to jointly work with Transitions to create a white paper noting the benefits of fMP4 and, to a slightly lesser extent, the potential benefits of MPEG-DASH (a proposed standardization of dynamic streaming over HTTP that I mentioned in a prior blog post).

Special thanks to Microsoft and Adobe for providing financial resources and access to subject-matter experts, who spent time expanding on key concepts and the ever-changing nature of fragmented MP4 and the MPEG-DASH ratification process.

The full white paper can be found here.

[Addition: Adobe and Microsoft have both published blog posts, outlining their support for fMP4 and mentioning reasons for working together: Adobe's Kevin Towes blog post  Microsoft's Chris Knowlton blog post]

Flashless for Mobile? Not Exactly

There's quite a bit of confusion about the impact of Adobe's decision (or what exactly the decision was) in regards to Flash Player of Mobile. Rightfully so, as the company didn't spell out its intent to its users at the same time it pushed out news to analysts during the 9 November analyst day briefing.

Besides the StreamingMedia.com article titled "Into (not so) thin AIR" (self-plug) there are two Adobe blog posts that may help explain where the company is going...or at least what it plans to still support:

Pritham Shetty's "Adobe Flash for Premium Video" blog post spells out what's in and what's out.

Mike Chambers's blog post, "Clarifications on Flash Player for Mobile Browsers, the Flash Platform and the Future of Flash" does a good job explaining the "why" of unsustainable growth in complexity Adobe faced in the wild-west atmosphere surrounding Android forking.

We conjectured, in the "thin AIR" article posted on StreamingMedia.com, that Android forking complexities could cause Adobe's costs to run rampant. It was helpful to get confirmation a few hours later, when Mike posted his Clarifications blog post, that Adobe had indeed seen this Great Wall of Android that it had to scale, and chosen a wiser path.

Google Purchases On2 - Additional Thoughts

Post has been moved to http://www.writethinkspeak.com - same date but more appropriate venue.