Fast switch to main screen?

Good day Pasokon,

agree, there are sometime moments when you are quite deep inside app and return to map screen take a few clicks as you wrote. Except rate cases (line 'Map items' screen), faster return to main map screen is currently not possible.

Optimal solution should be to return automatically when user expect it and this is what Locus do I hope. Like when you wants to display point/track, any map etc. Or is there any place where you expect that app return back to main map screen and it does not happen?

Dear Menion,

thank you for your reply.

Yes i know there are some cases, where the app returns automatically to the main screen (f.i. if you choose a poi) and the cases work fine. But i meant it more in a general way, so that the user can switch from any point (resp. menu) of the app to the main screen (an escape button or somthing like that). But i know this is not as simple as it sounds.

Best regards

Pasokon

Good day Pasokon,

I perfectly understand your point and to be true, I sometimes also miss quick return back to map screen. On second side, I never ( if I remember correctly ) saw such "quick return" button in other applications. Because of this ( it's not common pattern ) and because it is needed just from time to time ( rarely ), I'll keep it as is for now.

Anyway if anyone will have universal solution on this, we may discuss it of course. Thanks for understanding.

I checked three other apps, specifically their Settings screen, and none of them offer a 'quick return' to the app's main screen. In other words, it is common to "back out" of nested screens, one screen at a time.

One solution would be to limit the "depth" of the nested levels so it never requires more than 2 taps to return to the main screen. You would have to "flatten" the hierarchy. This means moving items to the main Settings screen (and increasing its length). It is not clear to me if that makes navigating Settings faster (fewer clicks) or slower (more to scroll through).

Thanks. I believe that logical structure of settings is more important that quick return to map. Settings should not be something you visit too often, so I see no serious reason to change it's structure.

Pasokon told also about "data" or "web services", maybe some more screens ... depth here isn't so bad. As I wrote, if there will be any option where you expect that app should return to map screen, just tell me.

How about "long-press" the back button to immediately return to the main screen?

Instead of tapping it 1-3 times to reverse through the screens one at a time, long-press it to jump directly to the main screen.

Thank you all for discussing this theme so intensively and the for the helpful suggestions for a solving the "problem". In the meantime I have to agree with Menion, that there a general solution is not a "must have" because of the potential impact with other applications or system features. A stable app is more important to me.

I didn't knew the "home button" feature in the map items menu for now and I think this would be a good solution in cases where you have to tap 3 or 4 times to go back to main screen. Here comes one suggestion for implementing it:

I quite often use web service menu (GPSies), that's a very helpful function for exploring new tracks. But if you are in the search result list, you have to tap 4 times to go back to home screen. At this point there would be a "home button" pretty helpful.

But, like I said, this is not a must have, more a usability feature.

Thanks to all.