Navigation inconsistency in the Settings app

[manuelr...@gmail.com]

I noticed an inconsistency in the way navigation is implemented in the Settings app. When the user presses one of the shortcuts on the double pull down notification area (the new ones in Android 4.2) the user is taken to the corresponding settings screens (WiFi, Bluetooth, Data usage, etc). The upper left area of the settings screens include just the Settings app's icon (see the attachment bluetooth.png). Pressing the icon doesn't lead to any result. The way to dismiss the screen is by pressing the Back button.

On the other hand when USB debugging is activated and the user presses the 'USB debugging connected' notification they are taken to the debug screen section of the Settings app appears but with a left pointing caret next to the Settings app icon (see the attachment debug.png). When the caret is pressed the settings screen is simply discarded and the user is returned to the home screen. Pressing the Back button has exactly the same effect.

According to the design guidelines at [1]:

Sometimes a screen doesn't have a strict position within the app's hierarchy, and can be reached from multiple entry points—such as a settings screen that can be reached from any other screen in your app. In this case, the Up button should choose to return to the referring screen, behaving identically to Back.

Considering that it would seem as though the debugging screen is implemented properly while all the shortcuts in the double pull down notification area are implemented wrongly. I argue the reverse. The double notification pull down shortcuts seem implemented correctly and logically, the debug screen seems wrongly implemented and the design guidelines are incorrect on this issue.

Can anyone from the Android team confirm which one of the implementations is incorrect? This inconsistency has been bugging me for a while now and I would like to fix it.

[1] http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/navigation.html

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Manuel R. Ciosici

[Adam Powell]

Yo've definitely found a bug in the USB Debugging notification. The Up button in the upper left corner should *never* exit the app the current activity belongs to. (Though it may jump tasks.) Moving Up from the USB debugging target should take you one level up in the Settings app's navigation hierarchy.

The case of the quick settings items is one we debated and we're not married to the current solution. Unlike a notification deep link, it's starting the target Settings activity without the full task stack but also as a separate task that does not remain in Recents. This is to make it fully transient; once you leave, it's gone and leaves no other history. It's easy enough to get back to from the QS panel and doesn't disturb any other navigation you may have built up in the Settings task.

If Up were offered on these screens it would need to deep link and replace any current Settings task just as Up does anywhere else. We decided not to offer this for now so as to keep the quick settings targets further separated from the rest of Settings. (Some of them may become lighter-weight dialogs in the future instead of full-screen activities.)

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