# Am I missing something about cards?



## zoidberg_md (Aug 26, 2011)

In another thread people posted what they missed about webos and the main answer has been cards ?

Now I felt it was the worst user experience because I could only see at most three cards (card groups) at a time and was slow to switch because of the animations and browsing the web in cards was incredibly slow. With android I set it to display 15 most recent apps, which in almost 99% of the time is enough to find what i'm looking for in that set of apps. Its faster and easier IMO. So do people just like the eye candy, because in terms of productivity its not any more useful ?


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## enik (Aug 21, 2011)

Because its real multitasking. Androids is ok but its nice to be able to see where in the app you are not to mention you can organize the cards not your most recent apps. I'm not bashing Android but the cards are a much better multitasking system for tablets.

Sent from my HP Touchpad using Tapatalk


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## androideric (Oct 6, 2011)

I think it's a mater of see'ing what's on the screen. With cards I would press a button and then scroll and tap a card to activate that window/application. With android I hold a button and choose a new one, or in my case i flick up to open my apps and choose what i want..or it's a widget already there.

I think the cards thing was a matter of personal taste in how you wanted to interact on your tablet.


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## chibucks (Aug 24, 2011)

and with android, you're not always able to start where you left off when you switched out... (or maybe it's user error on my part... )


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## zoidberg_md (Aug 26, 2011)

enik said:


> Because its real multitasking. Androids is ok but its nice to be able to see where in the app you are not to mention you can organize the cards not your most recent apps. I'm not bashing Android but the cards are a much better multitasking system for tablets.
> 
> Sent from my HP Touchpad using Tapatalk


With both devices your app can be only in a single state and you can only launch a single instance, taking into consideration most apps this really isn't a concern. So its going to be however you left it. You are only able to see a card to the left and a card to the right, I really don't see how its better for tablets. I can see 15 most recent apps, by app .. try opening up 15 browser cards along with email, calendar, and facebook in the card browser and scrolling to find what you want is a terrible experience. Either way I don't see how one is more real multitasking than the other.


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## enik (Aug 21, 2011)

That's why you can put twitter, Facebook, and email in one stack. News and weather in another. Can't do that with android and I think you missed my point 

Sent from my HP Touchpad using Tapatalk


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## zoidberg_md (Aug 26, 2011)

enik said:


> That's why you can put twitter, Facebook, and email in one stack. News and weather in another. Can't do that with android and I think you missed my point
> 
> Sent from my HP Touchpad using Tapatalk


In terms of my usage using Dolphin tabbed browser pretty much makes its useless for grouped browsers, and facebook, twitter are apps I use on Android. But yes I can see the grouped browser windows as somewhat convenience in some cases.


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## ilive12 (Aug 30, 2011)

zoidberg_md said:


> With both devices your app can be only in a single state and you can only launch a single instance, taking into consideration most apps this really isn't a concern. So its going to be however you left it. You are only able to see a card to the left and a card to the right, I really don't see how its better for tablets. I can see 15 most recent apps, by app .. try opening up 15 browser cards along with email, calendar, and facebook in the card browser and scrolling to find what you want is a terrible experience. Either way I don't see how one is more real multitasking than the other.


With WebOS the apps ARE running in the background. Play a video, and leave it, its still playing. With android, it starts killing apps by itself when its running low on memory. 15 recent apps doesnt mean 15 different apps are running in the background. But 15 open cards, _is_ 15 open sessions. Android freezes the state of the app and then resumes it. This is still better than iOS, but webOS takes the cake especially when on a tablet. Also you cant close apps on android, and dont even bring up ATK, because thats worse than leaving them open >.<


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## dspcap (Oct 13, 2011)

Both Android and WebOS can multitask, I think it's just a personal preference of which you like better. I think the Cards were horrible with their phones, but really nice with the tablet. I think if you give the tablet a few weeks, you will see why people like it.

I plan to have one tablet running webos and one tablet running android... they both have their advantages and disadvantages.

I also have the touchstone and wireless keyboard which give the tablet a much nicer experience. I love exhibition mode.

PS... I love my android phone


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## mputtr (Aug 1, 2011)

you know you can "ungroup" cards by tap holding the card and you can give it its own space or reorder them right?
and like some other people pointed out, it's true multitasking that allowed you to see what it's doing


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## ne0phyte (Oct 17, 2011)

ilive12 said:


> With WebOS the apps ARE running in the background. Play a video, and leave it, its still playing. With android, it starts killing apps by itself when its running low on memory. 15 recent apps doesnt mean 15 different apps are running in the background. But 15 open cards, _is_ 15 open sessions. Android freezes the state of the app and then resumes it. This is still better than iOS, but webOS takes the cake especially when on a tablet. Also you cant close apps on android, and dont even bring up ATK, because thats worse than leaving them open >.<


The question is how many parallel apps do you need. Do you use more then 5 or 10 apps at the same time? I don't think so. The memory management in android is really good. My old pre often just stated "too many cards" and refused to start more applications.


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## dspcap (Oct 13, 2011)

ilive12 said:


> With WebOS the apps ARE running in the background. Play a video, and leave it, its still playing. With android, it starts killing apps by itself when its running low on memory. 15 recent apps doesnt mean 15 different apps are running in the background. But 15 open cards, _is_ 15 open sessions. Android freezes the state of the app and then resumes it. This is still better than iOS, but webOS takes the cake especially when on a tablet. Also you cant close apps on android, and dont even bring up ATK, because thats worse than leaving them open >.<


I was playing with an Android tablet the other day and couldn't believe how stale it felt. WebOS definitely makes for a better tablet experience. Just wish they had the apps.


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## dspcap (Oct 13, 2011)

ne0phyte said:


> The question is how many parallel apps you really need. Do you really use more then 5 or 10 apps at the same time? I don't think so. The memory management in android is really good. My old pre often just stated "too many cards" and refused to start more applications.


It sure is nice to have my email, browser, and calendar all open at the same time. Just switch between the three and they are always open and refreshed.


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## zoidberg_md (Aug 26, 2011)

So from what I can gather its just the nice animations and grouping of browser windows. I really can't understand whats the difference between how background sync of calendar, email is different than keeping an active browser in the background running (in a lot of cases my android phone will get new email notices before my desktop browser even sees it) or why you would want a video playing to continue playing when its not in focus, but I guess there are cases where it maybe useful. Also switching tabs is faster for myself than scrolling through the card switcher. The general consensus is its about how you use it. I did give webos several weeks, and was left unused, because I thought the card system was terrible and the browser was even worse.


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## dspcap (Oct 13, 2011)

zoidberg_md said:


> So from what I can gather its just the nice animations and grouping of browser windows. I really can't understand whats the difference between how background sync of calendar, email is different than keeping an active browser in the background running (in a lot of cases my android phone will get new email notices before my desktop browser even sees it) or why you would want a video playing to continue playing when its not in focus, but I guess there are cases where it maybe useful. Also switching tabs is faster for myself than scrolling through the card switcher. The general consensus is its about how you use it. I did give webos several weeks, and was left unused, because I thought the card system was terrible and the browser was even worse.


Then I guess you have two choices... sell it on ebay or load android on it.

Curious, what do you think of Exhibition mode?


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## ChronoReverse (Oct 14, 2011)

ilive12 said:


> With WebOS the apps ARE running in the background. Play a video, and leave it, its still playing. With android, it starts killing apps by itself when its running low on memory. 15 recent apps doesnt mean 15 different apps are running in the background. But 15 open cards, _is_ 15 open sessions. Android freezes the state of the app and then resumes it. This is still better than iOS, but webOS takes the cake especially when on a tablet. Also you cant close apps on android, and dont even bring up ATK, because thats worse than leaving them open >.<


Actually even in Android, they CAN be running in the background. However, it's up to the app to use it instead of freezing when they lose focus.

Even in WebOS, things tend to slow down when in the background to the point where they're nearly stopped (in 3.0.2 that is; it wasn't like this on the Pre).


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## dspcap (Oct 13, 2011)

ChronoReverse said:


> Actually even in Android, they CAN be running in the background. However, it's up to the app to use it instead of freezing when they lose focus.
> 
> Even in WebOS, things tend to slow down when in the background to the point where they're nearly stopped (in 3.0.2 that is; it wasn't like this on the Pre).


I noticed things slowed down a lot too when I first got it. Couple weeks ago, I loaded F4 Phantom to overclock it and it's much better.


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## knaries2000 (Oct 18, 2011)

LIke others have stated. The card system of webOS and the recent apps of Android are totally different. The android most recent apps is just that, a list of most recent apps that you've opened. Don't really mean to belittle it, but is pretty much is just a list of app names. When you click on it, android will either open a new instance of it, or if it is already running, bring it to the foreground. The cards in webOS is almost the same as the application tabs you have in the bottom of windows or linux machines. they are running application that is put to the background (minimized). Think of webOS apps with a minimize, maximize, and close button like PCs. While android only has a semi-close/minimize and open button. webOS give much better multi-tasking control, similar to PCs.

You can easily test this out by opening a browser in android, go to whatever page, then press the home button and start doing other things (youtube, facebook, etc). then comeback to the browser. Depending on what you have done in between (how much memory was needed), when you re-open the browser, you will either be back to the previous state or and browser re-opens and have to re-download the page all over again.


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## zoidberg_md (Aug 26, 2011)

knaries2000 said:


> LIke others have stated. The card system of webOS and the recent apps of Android are totally different. The android most recent apps is just that, a list of most recent apps that you've opened. Don't really mean to belittle it, but is pretty much is just a list of app names. When you click on it, android will either open a new instance of it, or if it is already running, bring it to the foreground. The cards in webOS is almost the same as the application tabs you have in the bottom of windows or linux machines. they are running application that is put to the background (minimized). Think of webOS apps with a minimize, maximize, and close button like PCs. While android only has a semi-close/minimize and open button. webOS give much better multi-tasking control, similar to PCs.
> 
> You can easily test this out by opening a browser in android, go to whatever page, then press the home button and start doing other things (youtube, facebook, etc). then comeback to the browser. Depending on what you have done in between (how much memory was needed), when you re-open the browser, you will either be back to the previous state or and browser re-opens and have to re-download the page all over again.


Well the difference from my usage is semantics. Since apps can only launch a single instance ( except browser in webos), it really makes no difference. Besides the reloading of a page (in certain cases) when has the WebOs multitasking really had a significant benefit, vs Android model of background sync, and load on focus. I can tell you the biggest drawback of not having a tabbed browser in WebOs is the constant refreshing from clicking on a link and then pressing the back button, where as in Android it loads in another tab, and the state of the first link is preserved.


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## dspcap (Oct 13, 2011)

zoidberg_md said:


> Well the difference from my usage is semantics. Since apps can only launch a single instance ( except browser in webos), it really makes no difference. Besides the reloading of a page (in certain cases) when has the WebOs multitasking really had a significant benefit, vs Android model of background sync, and load on focus. I can tell you the biggest drawback of not having a tabbed browser in WebOs is the constant refreshing from clicking on a link and then pressing the back button, where as in Android it loads in another tab, and the state of the first link is preserved.


You have tabbed browsing in advanced browser.


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## Dingosaurus (Aug 22, 2011)

zoidberg_md said:


> Well the difference from my usage is semantics. Since apps can only launch a single instance ( except browser in webos), it really makes no difference.


I'm unsure of what you mean by this. I regularly have 2-5 Adobe PDF windows open on my TP during D&D sessions.


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## mputtr (Aug 1, 2011)

just sayin....

trololololololololololol


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## piiman (Aug 21, 2011)

enik said:


> Because its real multitasking. Androids is ok but its nice to be able to see where in the app you are not to mention you can organize the cards not your most recent apps. I'm not bashing Android but the cards are a much better multitasking system for tablets.
> 
> Sent from my HP Touchpad using Tapatalk


Please define "real multitasking"


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## ilive12 (Aug 30, 2011)

Realize, the multitasking of WebOS 3.0 was made for tablets and gingerbread multitasking was made for phones. As it stands, WebOS does have better multitasking but I think with ICS they will be on par.


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## Zaphod-Beeblebrox (Jun 21, 2011)

View attachment 4700


Here is a way to get "semi" working cards/multitasking in Android/CM7:

Install Perfect Task Switcher : https://market.android.com/details?...m9yZy5yYWJvbGQuYW5kcm9pZC50YXNrc3dpdGNoZXIiXQ..

PTS will try to take over as your launcher. Do not allow it to. Keep your preferred launcher as default. Open PTS and in the settings, tell it to launch the task switcher when launched from icon/app (I forget how it's worded).
Go into Settings ->Cyanogen Settings -> Input -> Set long press home to use a custom application, and then set Perfect Task Switcher as that application.

Now when you long press home, PTS will show you a 'card' like task switcher that you can use to change to or kill an app.

The only downside is that PTS cannot yet show a 'live' preview of the app on CM7. You only see an Icon of the app running. I believe the dev has been working on the CM7 issue.

It's still pretty cool


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## Turdbogls (Jun 7, 2011)

I am with the OP.
I absolutely hated the cards on web OS. besides the eye candy, it was a total waste of time for my usage.
opening a tab in the browser was super slow. it would close that card, slide over, open a new card, i would then have to wait for it to start loading before i could go back to the other tab.
in dolphin, i Longpress on a link, open in new tab, it opens and loads in the background. done.
i also prefer the longpress home button.

now i am not a power user, i use my TP for personal use at home...paying bills, some games, keeping up with news,sports,android ect. i do VERY little actual work with it. so maybe if i was using it for work WebOS would be better, but i still doubt it.


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## dspcap (Oct 13, 2011)

Instead of comparing Cards to holding down the home button and switching apps... how about comparing cards to widgets. I know widgets aren't multi-tasking, but when you have them refreshing on their own, what's the difference? I definitely prefer widgets to Cards.


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## uwndrd (Oct 13, 2011)

Yep, multitasking in WebOS is so much better than in Android. In WebOS you can run few games, browser, and a lot of other stuff and switch between then in any second. Android acts otherwise: even if you have all ram free, it would kill almost anything in the background, making usage of non-default browsers (and some other apps) quite irritating: neither Opera nor Firefox launches instantly.


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## Zaphod-Beeblebrox (Jun 21, 2011)

uwndrd said:


> Yep, multitasking in WebOS is so much better than in Android. In WebOS you can run few games, browser, and a lot of other stuff and switch between then in any second. Android acts otherwise: even if you have all ram free, it would kill almost anything in the background, making usage of non-default browsers (and some other apps) quite irritating: neither Opera nor Firefox launches instantly.


A lot of this has to do with the particular memory settings of the VM Heap. I'm not knowledgeable of exactly how the parameters interact, but there are sysctl settings that can be tweaked to favor more free memory, or keeping more apps in the 'cache'


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## jonohanson (Oct 18, 2011)

For me the multi tasking of cards wasn't that special, for example 2 apps a timer and kalamsoft player, when I put them into minimized cards and slid over to another card both would freeze(not very good for a timer) in the position they were at when I home buttoned them.

Thats not true multi tasking, in android alot of things do true multi task, for example things that run as services like 3g monitor, juice defender, radar droid, music player and the many thousands of apps there are.

I much prefer the android way over the Webos way and thats why it will die.


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## dspcap (Oct 13, 2011)

Zaphod-Beeblebrox said:


> View attachment 6784
> 
> 
> Here is a way to get "semi" working cards/multitasking in Android/CM7:
> ...


That is pretty cool.. I think it's weird that it shows the Launcher you are using though.


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## namecaps (Oct 18, 2011)

Can u provide the option name that u forgot? Cannot find it anywhere and still it launches recentest even that I chanched it in cm7 input

Sent from my HP Touchpad using Tapatalk


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## knaries2000 (Oct 18, 2011)

What the apps do when it is minimized is up to the developer of the app. So if developer wants his app to freeze or continue to run when it is minimized they have control. There is no definition of "true mutitasking". Generally for me and most users that are used to PCs (windows, linux, or mac), true multitasking is user / developer control, rather than OS control. With webos, users and developers have control of what is running and what is not. With android users and developers do not have that control, at least right now, maybe in future releases like ICS, that may improve. If you open up the settings for cm7 laucher you will see an option in the system setting tab for pin launcher in memory. That is a hack to work around this issue by trying to not allow the android garbage collector to kill the laucher there is memory pressure.



jonohanson said:


> For me the multi tasking of cards wasn't that special, for example 2 apps a timer and kalamsoft player, when I put them into minimized cards and slid over to another card both would freeze(not very good for a timer) in the position they were at when I home buttoned them.
> 
> Thats not true multi tasking, in android alot of things do true multi task, for example things that run as services like 3g monitor, juice defender, radar droid, music player and the many thousands of apps there are.
> 
> I much prefer the android way over the Webos way and thats why it will die.


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## Zaphod-Beeblebrox (Jun 21, 2011)

namecaps said:


> Can u provide the option name that u forgot? Cannot find it anywhere and still it launches recentest even that I chanched it in cm7 input
> 
> Sent from my HP Touchpad using Tapatalk


Not sure I follow. What launches? and When?


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## mortymouse (Aug 24, 2011)

enik said:


> Because its real multitasking. Androids is ok but its nice to be able to see where in the app you are not to mention you can organize the cards not your most recent apps. I'm not bashing Android but the cards are a much better multitasking system for tablets.
> 
> Sent from my HP Touchpad using Tapatalk


I am a huge Android guy and I agree with this. For me, WebOS is a must on my tablet (so is Android) when it comes to work. I use it for email, calendar, web, kindle, and a few other things. When I need other things or I just want to have fun then I switch to Android and CM7. Gotta tell you though as much as I bleed Android Green, I really like WebOS.


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## keyser1884 (Oct 19, 2011)

Yeah, when I'm doing simple things like e-mail, browsing, taking notes etc, the WebOS is much better than Android. The cards let me know when I've closed an app... if I'm surfing the iternet and close my card, I know I'll be presented with my home screen again instead of the last page I visited. Information is clean and clear and I always know what my tablet is doing at any point in time. I feel like I'm in control of the tablet, not ice-versa.

If we had the variety of apps from Android available to WebOS users, I don't think I'd use Android at all.


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