Re: Links VS Buttons in native mobile apps

On 03/12/2019 23:28, Murphy, Sean wrote:
> All,
> 
> I wish to know if anyone has done any research for native mobile apps in 
> relation to the usage of buttons vs links to present new content. To 
> clarify, the mobile app is pure native code and is not a app which is a 
> wrapper for a Web Technology contained  with in an app or a page loaded 
> in the mobile browser.
> 
> Discussions in the past have mention (in summary): Links on a web page 
> are used to open a new web page. If the link opens in a new browser tab 
> or window, then applying the statement of link opens in a new window is 
> recommended.
> 
> Native aps really don’t use this concept. Thus why seeking information 
> on the usage of links in a native app.
> 
> I hope someone can point myself in the right direction.

I would say that the general expectation when inside a native 
application and activating something is that as a user I'll still be 
inside the native app.

The distinction between "link" and "button" isn't that strong in the 
context of native itself, as "button"s navigate to other views regularly 
in native apps, having less of a "links to navigate, buttons to execute 
in-page functionality" that we have for web content.

However, when I activate something and it suddenly launches my separate 
native platform browser, that can be a bit surprising. But I'd say the 
idea here is the same: if it's a link/control that will open a separate 
application (like the browser), I'd say it's recommended to add some 
kind of hint about it (e.g. "opens in your browser", or something a bit 
more subtle/less space consuming). But I wouldn't necessarily say it's a 
hard requirement, and we're more in best practice territory.

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Thursday, 5 December 2019 18:49:43 UTC