You may have heard before that credit card numbers follow a certain pattern and structure so that they can be validated before a transaction is accepted. However, it's one thing to know that the structure is there and another thing entirely to understand how credit card numbers work.
Why would this knowledge be useful? Well, if you run a small business that doesn't process credit card payments immediately, you could save yourself money by ensuring the card details are valid. If you don't, well it could still be fun to show off your skills at parties. Here's how you do it.
Learning Where The Numbers Come From
Credit card numbers are not random. There's a special set of numbers to show information about the card issuer and another set to show information about the card holder. One other number is also important, but we'll come to that later.
The very first number is the Major Industry Identifier (MII) and it tells you what sort of institution issued the card.
1 and 2 are issued by airlines.
3 is issued by travel and entertainment.
4 and 5 are issued by banking and financial institutions.
6 is issued by merchandising and banking.
7 is issued by petroleum companies.
8 is issued by telecommunications companies.
9 is issued by national assignment.
The first six digits are the Issuer Identification Number (IIN). These can be used to look up where the card originated from. If you have access to a list that details who owns each IIN, such as this list of popular IINs on Wikipedia, you can see who issued the card just by reading the card number.
Here's a few you might recognise:
Visa: 4*****
American Express (AMEX): 34**** or 37****
Diner's Club International: 36****
Mastercard: 51**** to 55****
The seventh digit to the second-to-last digit is the customer account number. Most companies use just 9 digits for the account numbers, but it's possible to use up to 12. This means that using the current algorithm for credit cards, the world can issue about a trillion cards before needing to change the system.
We often see 16-digit credit card numbers today, but it's possible for a card issuer to issue a card with up to 19 digits using the current system. In the future, we may see longer numbers becoming more common.
The very last digit of each credit card is the check digit, or checksum. It is used to validate the credit card number using the Luhn algorithm, which we will now explain in detail.
The Luhn Algorithm Validation Check
The Luhn Algorithm is used to validate all sorts of numbers, including credit cards, IMEI numbers and some social security numbers. It's not designed to be a cryptographically secure hash function, but merely a way to check errors are not made when recording numbers. It is not foolproof, but is generally considered to be useful.
Take the credit card number and read the digits from the right. Double every other number and write them down - if you do it in the same order as your card is written it will help with clarity. Now, wherever you have calculated a double-digit number, change it so that it reads as "first digit + second digit" (in other words, sum the digits of the products). Finally, take your calculations and add those numbers to the numbers remaining on your card that you didn't double. A legitimate credit card number will give you a result that is divisible by 10.
For instance, let's use a number I've just made up: 4634 8932 1298 2767. I'll enter it into a table to make it easier to understand the steps.
Try it yourself using the card from the picture earlier in this article. What can you learn from it?
In the age of the Internet, privacy is a luxury and you have to constantly be on your heels to maintain it. Facebook makes it particularly hard for users to guard their personal data. Despite many changes, Facebook privacy settings remain complicated. Moreover, past updates have unexpectedly made previously private information available to the public.
Well, no stranger needs to know your email address, phone number, or see your family pictures. In this article I show how you can check what the public can see of you on Facebook. I also explain how you can control which of your information is visible.
What Information Can The Public See?
Do you think your profile is all locked up and the public cannot see anything they shouldn't? Well, how about we check it out, just to be sure!
Go to your Facebook Timeline, i.e. the page that is shown when you click your own name on Facebook. While you are logged in, you will of course see everything. In the top right of your profile summary that heads the Timeline, you should see a Settings icon next to the Activity Log button. Click Settings and select View As...
This reveals what your Facebook Timeline looks like to a complete stranger. You can also test the view for specific people, by entering their names in the respective field in the top left.
The Timeline is one thing, but what you should really check is your About page. So while viewing your Timeline from the public's perspective, click About in the bottom left of the header. This is where Facebook potentially reveals your contact information, your employer, your education, where you live etc.
Something else you should check is what other parts of your Facebook profile are available to strangers by clicking the About button in the top left. This could include your friends list, your photos, your likes, subscriptions, events you are attending, your notes, and music.
So did you spot anything you didn't want the public to see?
How Can I Remove Items From Public View?
For most content, Facebook makes privacy control fairly easy.
Let's start with your About page. Return to this page in your normal logged in view. Notice there is an Edit button in the top right of every box. An exception is your history because it only aggregates available information. Click Edit for an item you want to change, then click the little symbols next to each entry to control who can see this information. You can choose from a few default options, including Friends or Only Me . You can also make the information available to custom lists of friends. Don't forget to hit Save every time you change a setting.
Next, we will look at Photos. You can control the privacy for each photo individually. This is good to know because you cannot control the privacy level for the Profile Pictures album. To change its visibility, open a photo and click the Editbutton on the right. Now you can change the description, location, date, and select who can see the photo. Click theDone Editing button to save your changes.
Fortunately, you can easily change the visibility of your custom photo albums. You will find the menu icon to change who can see an album, next to the number of photos in the respective album.
Finally, to control what else people can see of you, including photos you were tagged in, let's look at your overall Privacy Settings. In the top right of your profile, click the little arrow and select Privacy Settings. This page allows you to customize privacy settings ranging from who can find and contact you on Facebook (How You Connect) and who can see posts you have been tagged in to social ads.
What is the best free antivirus? This is among the most common questions we receive at MakeUseOf. People want to be protected, but they don't want to have to pay a yearly fee or use bloated security suites with unwanted features. I myself am a free antivirus user for these very reasons.
Discovering the best anti-virus isn't easy, however. There are a lot of points to consider including the user interface, resource and overall effectiveness against the baddies. Let's take an in-depth look at five popular choices (Avast!, AVG, Ad-Aware, Avira and Microsoft Security Essentials) to see which is best.
Criteria
Our performance testing in this article consisted of a selected scan of a single 500GB mechanical hard drive that was approximately half-full. We used the full scan option. Our gauge of memory usage is based off the memory the software uses while running in the background and is the rounded average of what I witnessed over three minutes of use.
Lavasoft's rather wide main menu does a good job of providing information without overwhelming the user. Most of the features are turned on or off using sliders and the big, bright "Scan Now!" button makes it immediately clear where a user needs to click to perform a scan.
I was somewhat confused by the custom scan options, however, because individuals drives can't be selected before a specific box in the options is checked.
Lavasoft tries to lure users in by displaying advanced features that can't be used until the full version is activated. It's a bit disappointing to find a feature is not available, but this approach is less bothersome than the sidebar ads used by AVG.
Performance didn't prove to be a strong point. A full scan took a tad over twenty minutes, the second-longest result. The background application consumed about 32 megabytes of RAM while idle. That's not enough to drag down most systems but it is by far the worst result among the software evaluated here.
AV-Comparatives still does not include Lavasoft products in its file detection tests. AV-Test does test it, however, and found that it was able to handle 99% of recently discovered threats during the most recent round-up. The only flaw is 0-day attacks. Lavasoft detected just 80% of those threats, which ties Microsoft Security Essentials for last place.
By the way, you can grab Lavasoft Ad-Aware Pro for free in our Rewards section. It's just 500 points!
Avast!
Avast! features an interface that appears smooth and modern relative to most competitors. Its large window includes a lot of free white space and provides all the information you need to know about your computer's current protection.
I really like the software's real-time shield menu. It lumps all of the different threat vectors which Avast! protects against into one menu and shows you how much of each have been scanned. It even updates in real-time as new potential threats are checked.
Advertising is included but is mostly restricted to the installation process and the main menu. The computer scan and real-time shield menus, which users will deal with most frequently, are devoid of ads.
A full scan of our test drive required about 15 minutes, the second-best result. The background process required 3.5 megabytes of RAM at idle, which is technically the middle result.
Avast! missed about 2% of all samples thrown at it in the last AV-Comparatives malware detection test, an average result. The last AV-Test comparison agreed with those findings.
AVG
The interface of AVG is simple. It provides a list of icons, each representing a form of protection, and places the scan functions to the sidebar. The "Scan Now" link is literal. Click on it, and AVG will starts to work on your entire computer without any additional prompts.
While the basic anti-virus features are easy to use the additional components are a bit bewildering. AVG includes everything from e-mail protection to rootkit protection. A lot of these components are handicapped, however, and direct you to buy one of AVG's paid solutions. Other icons direct users to AVG products on other platforms, like Android.
AVG posted the least impressive scan time result. It required almost 23 minutes to chew through our 500GB test drive - about 75% longer than the quickest competitor. The background process, however, was the second smallest. It consumed just 2.4 megabytes of RAM at idle.
AV-Comparative's last file detection test found that AVG missed about 3.5% of all threats thrown at it, one of the least impressive scores in the test group. AV-Test, however, found that the software detected 99% or recent threats in its last round-up.
Avira
Avira has a confusing interface. For example, performing a specific scan requires that the user go to the System Scanner menu, then click on an option, then click a very small magnifying glass icon. Alternatively you can click the gear button on the main menu, but this opens up another menu that declares you must be in "expert mode" to change settings. Uh, what is expert mode? The big fat "Scan!" button used by competitors is more intuitive.
In-app advertising was light, but I was hit by a pop-up advertisement immediately after installing the software. Pop-up ads on my desktop are extremely annoying and not something I want to see, ever. There are also many features which are visible, but disabled until you buy the full version.
Avira blew away the competition in our performance tests. It required just over 13 minutes to perform a full hard drive scan and its background process consumed a measly 1.8 megabytes of RAM at idle. This software is clearly the best for users who prefer protection that is light on system resources.
Avira did extremely well in the last AV-Comparatives file detection test. It missed less than .5% of all samples and scored second-best overall, beating all other free solutions tested. Avira also detected 99% of recently discovered threats in the last AV-Test roundup.
Microsoft Security Essentials
Microsoft Security Essentials is different from the competitors because it's not a marketing tool. All the other vendors offer their free anti-virus in an attempt to earn name recognition and impress users, but Microsoft has no paid anti-virus to sell. This makes for a clean interface that's not cluttered by advertisements.
Some of the cleanliness is due to a lack of features, however. MSE can scan for, detect, quarantine and attempt to remove a virus, but that's all it does. There's no mobile version, no e-mail protection, no bundled anti-phishing. It is, as the name implies, only the "essentials."
MSE posted middling results in our performance tests. It required almost twenty minutes to fully scan our test drive and its background process consumed about 6.8 megabytes of RAM at idle.
Early testing of MSE suggested it was surprisingly competent, but more recent tests have been less kind. MSE came in last during the most recent AV-Comparatives file detection test. It missed almost 7% of all samples. AV-Test found that it missed 5% of recently detected samples in its last round-up.
So Which Is Best?
Avira is the technical standout. It has posted excellent scores in recent protection tests and it also ran away from the competition in our performance metrics. The downside is a confusing user interface. I had to explore the software for a few minutes before I understood how to operate it. If Avira could make the software just at tad more intuitive it would have the perfect product.
Avast! may be a better option for users who want to fuss with protection as little as possible. It is nearly as good as Avira in our performance benchmarks and it offers a slick, simple interface. Advertising is kept to a minimum, as well.
Lavasoft and AVG are suitable choices, but both have a catch that may be significant for some users. Lavasoft uses far more resources than the competitors while running in the background and AVG has an unattractive interface loaded with advertisements for the full version and other AVG products. Both offer competent protection, however.
Last, and least, is Microsoft Security Essentials. It was not the slowest in our tests, nor did it eat the most RAM, but protection studies have shown it to be the least effective at stopping threats by a large margin. Missing 5% of recent threats in the AV-Test roundup doesn't sound like much, but all other competitors missed 2% or less. Going with MSE makes you substantially more vulnerable.
Apps on Facebook can be great, but they can also be a right pain in the neck. On one hand, there's useful apps like Spotify or Last.fm which make it easy to share your music taste with your friends. Mostly these are welcomed and vaguely interesting for the friends to view. On the other hand, there's annoying games and spammy viral apps that post things on your timeline.
There are several ways to clean up the apps you're using and ensure your privacy settings for apps are set just right. There are also some easy ways to remove and report applications when required - like when you've accidentally clicked on a viral scam app. Here's what you need to know.
Setting Privacy For Applications
When your absent-minded friend installs yet another dodgy application, how much information do you want the developers to find out about you? And what about this way around - if you're using a new game, how much information do you want the developers to know about your family? Your grandmother? Your kids?
This is the reason people need to check privacy settings for applications. Until you lock down your privacy, you never really know what information is being collected about you and your friends via apps you or your friends may have installed. Scary, isn't it?
Go to the drop-down menu in the top right of Facebook and choose "Privacy Settings", then choose to edit the settings for "Ads, Apps and Websites". From here you can choose exactly what information can be seen by applications your friends install. Since you don't know anything about the developers of most apps or what your friends might install, un-checking most of these boxes is a great idea. Then, if you care about your family and friends, teach them how to do this too.
Clean Up Your Apps
There are two main ways to get a list of all your apps. Firstly, you could go to the arrow at the top-right of Facebook and choose "Account settings" and then choose "Applications". Secondly, you could navigate from the Facebook Home page to the "App Center" using the links on the left hand side, then choosing "My Apps" from the menu on the left.
Either of these options will give you a list of all the applications you have authorised for your account. Although, the second method has the option of sorting by "Last used", which is handy when searching for something you recently added or got annoyed by. To remove the applications, just click on the cross to the right of each application. Remove anything that looks suspicious, unfamiliar or unused and you could clean up your apps in no time. And don't worry, if you remove something useful it can always be added again later. It's no big deal.
How To Get A Spam App Off Your Timeline Wall
It happens all the time. People see an update in their feed from a friend claiming to let them view a certain video or see who looks at your Facebook profile. They click on it impulsively because they're curious and instantly they have posted that same update on to all their friends. The viral app continues to annoy and intrigue their friends and the cycle continues. So, how do you get rid of it?
Every update on your timeline can be removed and the application may be reported as spam. Simply head to your timeline and click on the edit pencil in the top-right of the update. The menu for an update will show a "Remove" option and a "Report Spam" option, while a clustered bundle of information from an application will show options to "Remove Application" or "Mark As Spam". If you accidentally remove the post first, you can use the methods above for cleaning up your apps to remove the app, which should show as recently used.
Never Get An App Request From THAT Person/App Again
If you hate getting reminders and requests from apps, there's an easy way to block them. Head to the Facebook Home page and choose "App Center" from the menu on the left, then "Requests". You'll see a list of all your recent requests from apps. From here it's simple - just click on the cross to the right of a request and it will give you the option to block the application completely.
Or if you're always getting requests from the same person, you can block that person's requests completely instead.
Hiding Apps From Your Newsfeed
We went through this in detail recently in the article "How To Get Rid Of Facebook Notifications & Other Annoying Things You Don't Want To See", but it's worth noting quickly here too. If an application shows up in your news feed that you find annoying, just click the drop-down arrow to the right and choose "Hide" from the menu. It will then give you the option to block the application or the person who made the update. Most of the time, hiding the application is the best move.
What bugs you about Facebook apps? Tell us all your pet moans and groans in the comments!
Regardless of the job you apply for, you'll need a sharp-looking resume that looks good on-screen and in-print to make a good impression. CV Maker is a webapp that makes it easy to create multiple professional, good-looking resumes online, save them for future updates and editing, and print them off whenever you want, all for free.
You can head over to CV Maker now and start building your resume for free without signing up for anything, but if you do sign up for an account (sign up with Facebook, or click the Login/Register link at the top to create an account by email address), you can save your resumes, come back to them later, and create multiple resume templates for different types of jobs, which can save you a lot of time when you're working hard looking for work. The service will even host your resumes publicly if you want, so others can come and download them. CV Maker also has multiple resume types to choose from, and while none of them are going to win any design awards, they all look professional, and sharp enough that they'll catch the eye but not so much that they're too flashy.
Sure, you could spend hours wrangling with templates in a desktop word processor and wind up with a resume that's difficult to update, CV Maker fits well in between.
The computer mouse is an incredibly nifty device, which unfortunately, a lot of people do not use to its full potential. There are many more things the mouse can do than left-click to move and select things or right-click to bring up context menus. Many of the tricks are easy to learn as they depend on no more than three keyboard keys. However, they can turn out to be huge time savers and making some tasks much easier.
I have to admit up front that the title of this article is not entirely accurate. As you will see, the list below has a dozen items, not just three. Well, my logic is that if you are slightly geeky and know your way around with computers, you have probably heard of a few of these tricks or maybe even most of them. However, I'm sure that the average person will find at least three Windows mouse tricks they have never heard of before. I have included some simple tricks to offer a somewhat complete list for those who are not as experienced.
Left Mouse Button Tricks
You hopefully know that you can use the [SHIFT] key to select multiple items in a folder. Now, you can do the same for text on a website or in a document. Just click the start point of the paragraph you want to select, then hold the [SHIFT] key, while you click at the end point of what you want to select. Et voilà , that whole chunk of text has been highlighted and can now be copied or edited.
To select text, left-click first character, then hold [SHIFT] key and select last character.
If you are a little more advanced, you probably know that you can also select a random series of items in a folder by holding down the [CTRL] key as you select the items. Again, the same can be done when you want to select multiple random chunks of text in a document. Just hold onto the [CTRL] key as you go and highlight whatever you want to select. This will not work everywhere, but it does work very nicely in Office documents.
To select pieces of text, hold [CTRL] key as you make your selection using the left mouse button.
Now here is a very advanced text selection trick. This one allows you to select text vertically. As the previous trick, this will not work everywhere, but does work inside word. Simply press the [ALT] key and select text using the right mouse button.
Vertically select text by pressing [ALT] key while selecting text with right-mouse button.
We all know that we can use the mouse to drag and drop items, even multiple ones. Did you know that is makes a difference what keyboard keys you are pushing while you use the mouse to drag and drop items? Hold down the [CTRL] key to copy items. Use the [SHIFT] key to move items.
[CTRL] + left mouse button to drag&drop item/s = copy item/s
[SHIFT] + left mouse button to drag&drop item/s = move item/s
The next two tricks are a little silly. You already know that you can use your mouse to click the buttons in the top right to close or maximize a window. But did you know you could double-click the center of the title bar to maximize a window? Well, if you knew that, try to double-click the top left corner in the title bar to close it? How is that? This may come in handy in case your mouse happens to be far from the top right corner and you can't be bothered to move it there. Other than that, me thinks this is about as useful as your appendix.
Double-click title bar of any window to maximize it.
Double-click top left corner in title bar of any window to close it.
Right Mouse Button Tricks
Above I showed you how you can use different keyboard keys to copy or move items while dragging and dropping items with your mouse. If you ever forget which keys to hold for what effect, just try to drag&drop items with the right mouse button instead of the left mouse button! Once you release the mouse button to drop the items, this will bring up a context menu that asks you what you want to do, i.e. copy here, move here, or create a shortcut. Handy, eh?
Drag&drop with right mouse button for action menu.
Everyone knows that the right-mouse button is used to open context menus for files and folders. Did you know that holding the [SHIFT] key as you do so will often reveal hidden options? Below is an example of right-clicking into the Library folder. Can you come up with more exciting revelations?
To open extended right-click context menu, hold [SHIFT] key as you right-click.
Scroll Wheel or Middle Mouse Button Tricks
Many people don't realize that the scroll wheel often functions as a button. This is true for most mice, that otherwise lack a middle mouse button. And that combination of scroll wheel and middle mouse button has skills!
Since you are probably all excited about this one if you just discovered it, let's start with the middle mouse button. If you already knew, the first trick will be old news for you, but hang on for the second one! The middle mouse button can be used to open links in a new tab in your browser. So instead of left- or right-clicking a link, try to middle-click it.
Open links in new tab by clicking them with middle mouse button.
The second middle mouse button trick is also done in your browser. Open a new tab. And now to close it, simply click it with the middle mouse button.
Close open tabs by clicking them using the middle mouse button.
Now here is a trick for the scroll wheel. Did you know that in many Windows applications, including your browser, you can use this awesome button, to zoom in and out? This even works in Windows Explorer, i.e. folders? Open a folder and hold the [CTRL] button while scrolling. Inside folders, it actually scrolls through the various view options, but at some point it also zooms in, until you have giant icons. More importantly, however, this trick can help you read better, when the font on a website or in a document is too small.
Hold [CTRL] button and scroll up to zoom in (enlarge text size) or scroll down to zoom out (reduce text size).
Do you know of any other mouse tricks that I missed? Please share them ! Also, which of the above were new to you or which one is your favorite
In my reviews, I frequently abuse and pick apart TouchWiz, Sense, and MotoBlur. I point out flaws, say "that's stupid," and wonder what the heck was going on when someone approved whatever half-baked change they've come up with. A lot of the UIs shipping on phones today are bad.
But it's not just the 3rd-party skins. Stock Android isn't perfect either, and that's what we're here to talk about today. Jelly Bean has all sorts of confusing user interfaces, weird bugs, things that don't make any sense, and things that desperately need polishing.
I criticize because I care - that goes for Sense, TouchWiz, and MotoBlur too. I want the Android user experience to be good, and this is a big component in making it better - open, honest discussion of what sucks (and, hopefully, receptive developers). If you always think everything is awesome all the time, and that polish, "nit picking," and user experience don't matter, then you turn into desktop Linux. No one wants that.
First though, a few ground rules. I'm not going to talk about justAndroid. Any reasonably popular Google app is fair game. Gmail, Maps, Voice, Docs, etc. - the big ones that you think about when you think "Android." So let's get to it. Jelly Bean and its assorted Google Apps are going in front of the firing squad. These are the things that are wrong with Android.
I Never Have Any Idea What The Back Button Will Do
Here is a screen cap from Google's official Galaxy Nexus User Guide (PDF), explaining what the Back button is supposed to do:
So the Back button should open the previous screen. Use of the word "History" makes me think it should work like the back button in your browser. Boy, would that be awesome. There are so many times when that just doesn't happen.
The back button is broken in a million different ways. Here, I'll show you.
Sometimes It Goes To A Screen You’ve Never Been To
Open an email from the Gmail widget, then hit back. According to the manual, you'll go back to the previous screen, which would be the home screen. You don't. You end up at the beginning of your Gmail inbox. That's not the previous screen; that's a screen I've never been to. That's incredibly unexpected. A second press will take you where the first one should have: the Home screen.
Sometimes It Works The Way It Should
Since we can't believe the user manual, let's be smart users and learn from this interaction: the Back button takes you to the "main page" of an app, then a second back press will get you to where you were - lesson learned.
Ok, so, with our newfound knowledge that Back actually takes you to the main page of an app, let's take a screenshot! Open your screenshot notification and you'll be viewing it in the Gallery. Now, from here, back should take you to the main screen of the Gallery, right? Gmail took you from a message to the main page, so Gallery should do the same.
Nope! Gallery closes. This time, the back button is working as the manual states, and just takes you to the previous screen. So here are two Google apps that treat the back button completely differently. What is a user supposed to think?
Sometimes It Skips Several Previous Screens Entirely
We’re going to McDonalds! Screen 1: I’ve searched for it; I’ll click on this MickyD’s to see the info. Screen 2: Ok, looks good, let's get directions. Screen 3: Navigate! Screen 4: No wait! I picked Driving Navigation but I actually need Mass Transit Navigation, let me just hit back and change that (and hit ok on the "are you sure" message). Screen 5: We’re back to… screen 1?!
Yes, here, the back button completely skipped 2 screens of UI for no reason. My search was over, and I just wanted to hit back and change the navigation settings, but the Back button threw me all the way back to my search results. It also zooms out for some reason. This is even more frustrating when you take mass transit, because then the "directions" screen has all sorts of settings. Settings that you had better get right the first time.
Sometimes It Takes You To A Screen You Opened Hours Ago
Things get even murkier when you add 3rd parties into the mix. Before we try this one, open the Play Store, hit menu, go to "My Apps" and pick an app. I'll go with Chrome. Now hit the home button and you're primed for some Back button mayhem:
Screen 1: OK, so, here's Beautiful Widgets, the #3 paid app in the Play Store, and owner of a "Top Developer" badge. Let's tap it and check it out. Screen 2: Oh, a popup that takes us to the Play Store. Ok, hit "yes." Screen 3: Actually, on second thought, let's hit Back and read that message again...
Wait. We're looking at Chrome now?!
Remember, Chrome was the last thing we opened in the Play Store, so for this particular quirk, the Back button goes to that. If things followed the user manual and went to the previous screen, we would be looking at the Beautiful Widgets popup. If you've got a lot of RAM and processes never die, looking at Chrome in the Play Store could have happened several hours ago, and you would be thoroughly confused.
This doesn't even go up a level in the Play Store's navigational hierarchy, it just throws you into the Play Store back history (a "Back Stack" in Android developer lingo). Hitting back a second time takes you to "My Apps," and a third Back will load the main screen of the Play Store. Where did Beautiful Widgets go? We are just totally lost now.
Yes, I know this is probably Beautiful Widget's fault, but why is Google letting developers screw with the back stack in the first place? If it is only supposed to "open the previous screen," like the user manual states, why would developers ever need to mess with it? “The back button loads the previous screen” is the only way this button should ever function if you want users to understand it. Have the system keep track of back history and don't ever let anything change it, and you'll have a consistent, understandable button.
Right now, "Back" is a seemingly random command that takes you to something sort-of related to what you've been doing in the past few minutes. You never quite know where it's going to go, or which quirk it's going to exhibit this time. Every single time the back button does something other than load the previous screen, it is incredibly damaging to the user. When you aren't quite sure how a button works, each time is a learning experience, and all it ends up teaching you is that the Back button is a totally unpredictable, inconsistent mess that shouldn't be trusted. I firmly believe that Andy Rubin himself could not reliably predict what the back button will do at any given moment. It's a mess.
Navigation Is Still Gingerbread-Themed
This is not a "new vs. old" comparison of Google Maps. The left picture is Google Maps 6.11.1, and the right picture is Google Maps 6.11.1. Both of these shots are from the same application running on the same phone. The left shot is the layers menu in regular map mode and the right shot is the layers menu in navigation mode.
Google has just totally forgotten to upgrade Navigation through two versions of Android now. Google Maps is a flagship Android app, and some of it is still Gingerbread-themed. How can you go around tell people to upgrade to Holo (the name for the ICS and above theme) when you don't even do it on all your apps?
Same thing goes for the menu button; this is an old-school Gingerbread menu. Navigation actually has both Gingerbread and Holo menus. Hitting "More" will bring up the normal layout.
There is just so much wrong with Navigation's design. Just look at these two pictures, and tell me if the UI matches. Android doesn't used rounded gradients on everything anymore. Things are supposed to be flat and clean looking. Check out how regular Maps, on the right, handles the UI elements. Do that. Flat, semi-transparent backgrounds would look great. These two screens are from the same application - they need to look like it.
See that button in the lower right? That's also not what a menu button looks like anymore. This is trying to emulate the hardware menu button symbol you see on many older devices like the Nexus S, but the vertically-stacked lines were replaced with vertical dots in Ice Cream Sandwich.
The Recent Apps List Gets Confused
Recent Apps can't keep its thumbnails, icons, and apps straight. Sometimes it will say one app, and open another; sometimes it will have the name and icon of one app, and the thumbnail of another. Things can get seriously confusing. Here are some examples. Feel free to follow along.
Open up any browser, and search for an app, like Angry Birds. Find the Play Store link and open it in the Play Store app (not the browser). You're now looking at Angry Birds in the Play Store. Great.
But now, hit Home and check out your recent apps. You get your browser's name, and your browser's icon, but the Play Store's thumbnail. Here you can see it failing in Chrome and the stock browser, so it's definitely an OS-level bug. I'm pretty sure you can replicate it with any link from any app (Talk, Gmail, Text, etc.).
Ok now, pop quiz: If you tap on one of these hybrid entries, what do you think will open? It says "Chrome," but the thumbnail is of the Play Store. So which is it? It doesn't really matter. It's broken and confusing and should be fixed. For the record though, it's the Play Store. The thumbnail wins.
Oh, but don't go thinking "The thumbnail is always right" is a rule or anything. Here's a totally different way to break Recent Apps. Find an email with a picture attachment and hit "view," you're now looking at your picture in the Gallery. Hit Home and check out your Recent App entry: It says "Gmail" and has a Gmail thumbnail. So it's going to open Gmail, right? Nope. It opens the Gallery with your image.
This is all especially ridiculous when you see it with the transition animation:
The thumbnail starts as Gmail, begins to expand, and then fades into the Gallery. And no, you weren't seeing things, occasionally (especially with slow animations on) this causes a crazy tear to happen mid-animation, because, understandably, Android has no idea what the heck it should do when this happens. Sometimes System UI will even crash, and the software buttons and status bar will go away completely.
Sure, in this example, Gmail is only a back button press away, but you could go further down the rabbit hole and do things like hit the menu button and start doing image editing, and the thumbnail would still be blissfully unaware that Gmail is now the Gallery. In the Angry Birds example, you navigate all around the Play Store and the Recent Apps listing will never update.
It's never ok to tell the user you're going to do one thing and then, when they tap it, do something else.
This bug also gets seriously confusing when you do something like open a YouTube link from Google Reader. Say I get interrupted in the middle of my YouTube video and have to jump out. Even though I was using YouTube, there's no YouTube thumbnail in recent apps. Where did my video go?
Icons Will Open The Wrong App
Here's some really basic UI functionality that I can break: I can make an icon open a different app. The most popular apps that do this are Google Maps and Latitude. So, if you'd like to follow along, grab yourself some shortcuts.
Tap on Maps, Maps will open! Great. Now, hit Home and tap on Latitude. Latitude will open. Everything's good so far, hit Home again. Now tab the Maps icon again. You don't get Maps anymore, you get Latitude. You will always get Latitude until you close it. So the Maps icon will open Maps, until you open Latitude, then it will open Latitude. The same trick works with Google+ and G+ Messenger, where the G+ icon will open G+, until you open Messenger, then the G+ icon will open Messenger.
This is incredibly disorienting, especially when, like with the Beautiful Widget/Play Store bug, this could have happened hours ago on a modern, high-RAM device.
There are three Android quirks going on here that make this possible.
1) Android icons work differently than every other icon ever made, in that, if the app is already open, it will switch to it and load the last-used screen instead of opening a new instance and showing you the default opening screen. Sometimes, there is no difference between opening a running app with an icon and using recent apps.
2) Android presents Maps/Latitude and G+/Messenger as separate apps to the user, when to the system they are the same app.
3) This would all actually be fine if the icons worked the same, but they don't. Latitude will open the existing Maps process and force the display of the Latitude screen, while Maps will open the existing Maps process, but it doesn't force the display of the default Maps screen. So once you open Latitude, Maps opens Latitude. The same goes for G+ and Messenger. Apps like this shouldreally force a consistent opening screen. Recent apps should be for switching to an app and saving the screen state. Icons should always open a certain screen.
No Two Icons Are The Same Size
If you’ve ever thought two icons looked “weird” next to each other, this is why – icon sizes are all over the place. The tallest, the Google Maps “Local” icon, is 94 pixels high on a Galaxy Nexus, while the shortest, Movie Studio, is 72. A 22 pixel swing is not ok. Local is 30% bigger than Movie Studio!
There isn’t even a single dominant icon size – it’s a pretty even distribution from 72-94 pixels. This is like, interface design 101 stuff. Make everything a consistent size. The varying text heights are from the icons centering themselves, that’s not consistent either.
This mess of iconography is particularly noticeable in the home screen dock, where things like the above picture are possible. Some icons just don’t “look right” next to each other. These are all stock icons that come with the phone. Heck, the two on the right are from the same app. Yes, Google Maps somehow managed to include both the tallest icon and the second-shortest icon in my survey. Amazing.
You people make Android design guidelines, follow them! Surprisingly, the Android Design Guidelinesdon’t specify an icon height. They give launcher icon dimensions of 96x96, but then say “You can also include a few pixels of padding in launcher icons to maintain a consistent visual weight with adjacent icons.” Translation: “Eh, whatever, just eyeball it.”
NO! Bad Google.
The Google Voice Icon Makes No Sense
Speaking of icons, this one kind of makes my head hurt. On the left is the first screen that pops up when you click on Google Voice. It's your text inbox. Voice will also show you missed calls and voicemails (so will the phone app), and the initial setup will hook up your Google Voice phone number, but I think we can all agree that, day to day, this app is used for texting. Right? Good. So then, what the heck is up with the icon?
So tell me, those two icons in the center, if you've never used Android before, do you think you'd be able to guess which one was the phone and which was for text messages? They look like the same thing!
If this is a texting app, why is it called "Voice"? Why is the icon a picture of a phone? This app doesn't make phone calls. I recently switched my Dad over to an Android phone, and I always feel like an idiot when I have to remind him of this: "The texting app is called "Voice." It's got a picture of a phone on it, in a speech bubble."
How is a normal person supposed to keep this straight? I understand why it's called Voice, because I know the history behind the app and I know what the desktop version does, but normal people don't know that, and it's ridiculous to expect them to.
The Play Store Doesn't Remember Your Scroll Location
Open the Play Store and search for something; I'll go with "Clock Widgets." Scroll down a bit (note the scrollbar location) and pick an app. Now hit Back. You're back to the top of the list. It totally forgot your list position.
Every list in Android remembers your location except for this one - even other Play Store lists.
Google Music Has No Status Bar... In Landscape
This one makes me rage every. single. day. Why is Google Music a full screen app?! It has no status bar in landscape. Is dealing with a notification while listening to music an unheard of use-case or something? This isn't a video game, sorting through music does not require my full attention. Taking away the status bar in a regular app is completely crippling and makes me never want to open music in landscape.
I use my phone in a car dock (while stopped) all the time. If music is open and you get a notification, you have no easy way of dealing with it. You have to leave the music app just to see what the notification is. This is completely ridiculous. Google Music breaks one of the core UI elements of Android.
Portrait, for some reason, is completely ok with having a status bar. I have no idea what was going on when they decided to do this.
Gallery is the same way. No status bar in landscape. I don't browse through the Gallery that often, but it's not acceptable here, either.
Horizontal Support Sucks
Landscape mode was introduced pre-Android 0.9, and, something like 10 versions later, it has yet to trickle down to every app. Most notably the launcher, app drawer, dialer and answering a call. Do you have a horizontal car dock or kickstand? Did you want to launch an app or answer a phone call? Good luck with that.
Unmanageable Cloud Storage Pictures In The Gallery
Google+ Instant Upload, if you don't know, automatically uploads every picture you take to a private Google+ folder. If you use Google+, it makes sharing super easy, and if you don't, it's a free, automatic, unlimited picture backup that you should really take advantage of. When they launched this feature, they decided to sort-of integrate it with the Gallery.
The Gallery displays your instant upload pictures, and that's it. You can't delete them, you can't move them around, you can't edit them or do anything you can with a normal picture. There is only a teeny, tiny Picasa icon denoting this, and I bet no one understands that.
Automatically uploading every picture obviously makes this folder pretty spammy, and just about everyone with an Android phone has asked me "How do I delete pictures from this folder?" The sad answer is "Go find a desktop computer and log into this website," which makes absolutely no sense.
This has the bonus effect of storing picture in two places on your phone, the camera folder and the Instant Upload folder. So for most people, pictures that they think have been deleted aren't deleted. I can just imagine all the panicked, late-night Googling from sexters that suddenly discover their thought-to-be-deleted dirty pictures are permanently stuck on their phone. If you're going to integrate something, Google, go all the way. Don't show people pictures they can't delete.
Instant upload is the most obvious example of this, but it happens to a million other Google services too. Have a Blogger blog? You'll have an untouchable album in the Galley. You also have untouchable albums for G+ Posts, Google Maps Picture uploads, G+ Albums, and Instant upload will spawn a new album every 500 pictures. All in all, I have 15 albums in my Gallery, 3 are from the phone that I can touch, 12 are untouchable, pointless crap.
Small Things That Give Me A Headache
Yes these are small, but when people say things like "iOS is more polished than Android," this is what they are talking about.
Jelly Bean Broke The Menu Button Glow
Jelly Bean changed the color of the software button glow from blue (in ICS) to white. The problem is, when it came time to do this, they updated the glows for the big buttons and copy/pasted it over the Menu button. This looks terrible. The Menu glow used to be smaller and sensibly sized; now it overlaps the other buttons. This makes my OCD hurt. *twitch*
GTalk Messages Are Buttons That Don't Do Anything
Every message in Google Talk is a button. They turn blue when you tap on them... and that's it. A tap doesn't actually do anything, and neither does long press. Maybe someday you'll be able to long press and get some options, like copy text, but right now they are just pointless.
This probably happened because Google Talk was obviously a copy of Messaging, and Messaging actually has some long press options.
This Calculator Button Is Broken
OK - Calculator. Notice the delete button: A nice, uniform size that's in line with the other function buttons. Now, do some math and hit equals, and "DELETE" changes to "CLR."
Two things: 1 - Why is the button bigger now and out of line with everything? "Delete" is 6 characters and "CLR" is only 3. CLR doesn't need a bigger button. And 2 - Why abbreviate "Clear" with "CLR"? "Clear" is 1 character shorter than "Delete" - you could have fit the whole word. Go with all full words or all abbreviations.
Note: This doesn't happen in ICS, it's actually a Jelly Bean regression.
The Uninstall Interface is Half Popup and Half Full Screen
This cool little popup uninstall interface was added to Jelly Bean, but they only changed half of the uninstall interface. You still get this huge, empty, screen-filling UI during and after the uninstall. On the Nexus 7, you get a little window for both interfaces, and it looks much better.
The On-Screen Button Rotate Animation Is Completely Wrong
Why do the buttons move during the screen rotation animation?! They don't actually go anywhere! They start at the side, rotate downwards, and are replaced by a second set of buttons.
Go open the camera app and rotate it. The icons rotate on their axis, they don't move out of position because they don't change position. This is misleading, confusing, and it looks broken. The whole black bar should stay and the app area should rotate.
Contact Pictures STILL Look Like Ass
An old favorite from way back in 2009. Still unfixed. ICS and above is designed for 256x256 contact pictures, which is probably too low of a resolution. Google Contact Sync likes to hand out 96x96 images, which are way too low. Artem admirably tore this issue apart right here, after Google claimed they fixed it.
There Is No Way, Anywhere, To See Your Purchased Apps
Yeah, so, tell me, what apps do you have purchased in the Play Store? You used to be able to tell, but at some point a Play Store update happened that wiped out that feature, and currently, for months, there has been no way, anywhere, to see what apps you have purchased. Personally, I have no idea what apps are floating out there that I've paid for. It's gotten so bad that people have taken matters into their own hand with things like the Legacy Play Store.
Google Makes A Million Texting Apps
Google is the Baskin Robbins of texting services. You want to send a text message to a friend? Pick your poison: Messaging, G+ Messenger, Google Talk, or Google Voice. Messaging is for sending carrier text messages, G+ Messenger is for Google+ messages, Talk is Google's multi-platform IM service, and Voice is Google's carrier texting replacement. All of these do basically the same thing with slightly different UIs.
App Navigation Styles Are Diverging
The picture on the left is the "normal" way to navigate and switch accounts in ICS and above. You tap on the current location (in this case, "Inbox") and a drop-down appears. This style is used in Gmail, Email, Maps, Calendar, Drive, Talk, and Voice. Google+ and YouTube, however, were recently updated with this crazy side-menu thing that pops up when you hit the app back button (the app icon in the top-left).
I like this design, I really do - the problem is that these two apps use roughly the same idea but implement it in totally different ways. YouTube doesn't slide the top action bar over, while G+ does. In Google+, tapping on the icon opens and closes the side bar, while on YouTube, it will only open it. YouTube's side bar can be opened and closed with a swipe gesture, but G+'s can only be closed with a swipe. It's just a mess.
Conclusion
Android still needs a lot of polish. There is hope though, one of the coolest things about Android is the phenomenal rate at which it improves. Just over the course of writing this article, I've had to remove some complaints because they were fixed.
Google Drive, for example, had an incomprehensible paste icon, and in the latest update, it was revised to a more normal, clipboard-style icon.
Since Matias Duarte took over Android design, consistency and UI issues like this have significantly improved. There's still plenty of work to do, but Android is in good hands. Things are loads better than they were a year ago. Hopefully stuff like this gets fixed, and we all end up with a prettier, more user-friendly, more cohesive Android.
Ah. Well. That was cathartic. You should try it! Let's have a hate-fest in the comments. Tell me, what bothers you about Android?
It's true, we still have a lot of work to do. Personally I feel like I've gotten only about a third of the way to where I want to be with regards to consistency, responsiveness, and polish.
