
Fore: thinner Android view layers - erdo
https://erdo.github.io/android-fore/
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iainmerrick
It’s funny that they list support for screen rotation as a key feature, as if
this is some kind of rocket science... but they’re totally right to do so,
because on Android it _is_ rocket science at times!

I’ve never properly understood why mobile screen rotation needs to be so much
more difficult to handle than desktop window resizing.

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furgooswft13
You can disable activity restart on screen rotation but you shouldn't because
if your app can't handle that it won't be able to handle any number of other
config changes (UI density, font settings, localization etc.) to say nothing
of restarting gracefully when Android force stops it in the background.

Really the issue is websites and desktop programs have the expectation of
being always running and in-memory until they choose not to be.

Not to say that the way Google decided to handle these issues in Android is in
any way ideal. And CSS for all its warts has far better support for responsive
design than the stock Android layout system.

~~~
esrauch
If I could choose between "fast rotates, all apps crash/are killed on OS level
font settings changes" or "slower rotates, apps gracefully handle OS level
font settings changes" I feel like the former is clearly way preferable to the
latter. Do you really feel differently?

~~~
furgooswft13
It's not a matter of speed, it's a matter of preventing the app from losing
state, background tasks, timers, notifications etc. whenever you do something
as normal as take a call and browse the web before trying to go back to the
app at hand. If it can't handle config changes it will crash a lot, sometimes
even when not fully backgrounded.

That being said there are plenty of apps (video players for instance) that
disable config changes on rotate as to more quickly switch between
orientations. They still need to handle config changes properly for times like
when the app is put into the background, and sometime later restored in a
different orientation.

