For me (de/en, javascript enabled/disabled) the BROWSE tab
- technically works. Good!
- fails for 93% of the apps for me as a human. Not good.
To elaborate on the second point: The BROWSE tab presents a fraction (1/45th) of a sorted list (oops, a linear linear list scales with n. Fine for small numbers, for larger numbers scaling with log n would be much preferred).
The information (besides app name) given in the list read like “Icon pack (GPL 3.0)”, “CM12/13 FLOSS Theme (GPL 3.0)”, “Icon pack (GPL 3.0)”, “Public transport navigator (GPL 3.0+)”, …
Note, I retyped the above information because they were not cut’n pastable. This probably qualifies me as someone who is willing to give some extra effort. You judge.
The sorted list is sorted to a single criterium: the criterium is: “Alphabetically ascending”.
This is a) technically extremely sound (good!), b) means nothing. In the sense of NOTHING (not good).
I know that on the phone (fdroid app) a hierarchical listing (like “New”, “Recently”, "“Development”, “Games”, …) is available. Which would typically reduce my time of searching by a factor of 10. TEN. This is a handicap factor for web users where something like this comes to mind “are others really going to take this/is that path of finding information really used/am I just the only one/am I’m really so off-track/what are computers for/why did I pay twice as much for my monitor than for my (medium to medium upper) smart phone”? I proceed to the second page upping me up to about ~4% of success, then the 3rd page (~ 7% success which is the above mentioned 93% failure. Your personal tolerance might be different but I you’ll have a hard time scanning through the alphabetically sorted first 50% (just time it!) if you’re in the mood of “I just to get things work”).
The categories on the phone allow reducing human interaction time by a factor of ten (±something). Additional sort criteria are available “app X looks similar to/often installed/users who installed, also/recently gained lots of installs”. Oops, alarm is ringing (I consider myself privacy aware, others consider me very privacy aware) but I would be willing to feed an opt-in database with installed(or even used) applications and the some self indicated categories I’m mostly interested in. Just to make things scale. Scale. SCALE.
My post may sound like a rant but I really mean to express something different:
a) there is more work needed to have an efficient work flow for the casual user.
b) For all that has been achieved it is nowhere close. For this goal I expect 6 man months of work. And (to my esteem) not be there (It’s also about smoothness and growth model too). Thanks for all that has been done! THANKS!
