[rendezvouscp]

> Imagine if Android’s Gmail app made you click the trash to save something. We would certainly see complaining blog posts and snarky tweets all over the place. So why does Instapaper get a free pass?

I’m not sure that we would. There are some great designers working on Android apps, but I don’t get the feeling that the UIs get the same critical eye, especially because there is less consistency throughout Android.

Marco should probably have the Archive box and the trash icon in the main list view instead of the trash icon that does both. However, I get the feeling that he doesn’t care as much about the polish of Instapaper as some people do. Last year I sent him an email with a list of adjustments to bring Instapaper in line with how iOS apps should behave (e.g. table view cells should fade out with the back-navigation transition instead of after it), but months later, most of the issues aren’t fixed. It’s the little things that really show polish and he doesn’t seem to be responsive to fixing the little things.

[kennywinker]

Have you considered that he might care a great deal, but disagree with your specific suggestions?

[rendezvouscp]

Yes, but when it comes to suggestions about standard UI features, I’d be surprised if he disagreed. Apple sets a fairly clear precedent for how standard iOS UIs should work, and whether or not it’s in the Human Interface Guidelines, going against the standard Apple sets feels sloppy.

I would find it more likely that, even though (IIRC) the guy handling Instapaper’s support said he would pass it off to Marco, he simply didn’t see my suggestions or ever do anything with them.

[homosaur]

I think you can maybe even make the argument that it doesn't matter if he agrees, if he's going against the HIG or even established standards then he's wrong about it.

[kennywinker]

This is definitely not true. Many of the best UI ideas coming out of iOS go against "established standards".

This is assuming the stuff is intentional, of course. If it's unintentional, it may simply be a low priority. Whether the UITableViewCell is de-selected during or after the animation is a pretty subtle and innocuous ui artifact that could nevertheless require deep changes under the hood to fix. If I was Marco, I'd weigh the impact of leaving it how it is, with the work required to change it, and probably end up leaving it until next time I reworked that area of my code. One man operations require tradeoffs pretty much all the time.

You can always use Pocket if you can't handle the occasional not-very rough edges this results in.

[ja27]

Or that he might want to change it but knows that changing it will result in complaints and negative reviews because something changed?

[tmoretti]

In Build and Analyze #50 ( http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze/50 ), starting at around 22:30, Marco describes why he made these decisions.