Eliminate the "Close" Menu option

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Eliminate the "Close" Menu option

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Some people have left comments on the Android Market about being unable to 
close the app.  Specifically, some referred to it running as a service making 
it impossible to kill.  Do we have more info on this?

Original comment by [email protected] on 6 Jul 2010 at 6:21

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Audio for stories is played in a background service.  This is done so users can 
multitask (browse other stories, other apps) while still enjoying NPR content.  
This is a common use-case for Android apps. The current "Close" button does not 
end any background services.  Pausing playback doesn't kill the service either. 
 If users are looking for a way to reclaim system resources manually (ie. 
overriding Android's process management) the current "Close" button isn't the 
way to do that.  

Bundled Android apps with equivalent functionality do not use any "Close" 
option. A simple test showed the bundled Music app behaves the same as the NPR 
app when it comes to playback in a service.  I recommend platform consistency. 
Having the "Close" option confuses users and I recommend simply removing the 
menu option.  The current playback behavior is consistent with the platform.  

Original comment by [email protected] on 6 Jul 2010 at 10:47

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I've continued to get feedback that the app does need a close option.  Even 
advanced task killer seems not to be able to kill the app.  Am I 
misunderstanding something here?  Perhaps we're not speaking the same language. 
 Can the app not be closed by a user?

Please, someone help me understand! :)

Original comment by [email protected] on 7 Sep 2010 at 3:29

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There may be a difference in the experience between the NPR and other apps (and 
this may be addressed by 2.0 redesign). In the Music app, when I play a song I 
can 'back' or 'home' out of the app and the music keeps playing (as the NPR app 
does). When I touch the notification for the playing music, however, it takes 
me back to a page with an obvious 'pause' button. That 'now playing' view is 
clearly contextual to the service and provides clear affordances for the action 
of playing music.

In the NPR app when a program is playing in the background, when I touch the 
notification it returns to the program details page. This has clear context 
related to the playing program, but the play/pause buttons are hidden.  Looking 
at the spec for 2.0 it appears that the player drawer may always be open when 
something is playing, which might resolve this. Is that the case?

Original comment by [email protected] on 7 Sep 2010 at 4:05

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Task killers can kill an app, but Android itself may re-start it when resources 
become open. It's the equivalent of pre-caching frequently used applications in 
memory on a desktop OS. Android also kills the application whenever it needs 
resources. On a first-generation device, if you open the browser, pretty much 
everything else dies, without user intervention.

The music service itself tries to be very conservative in terms of its usage. 
It kills itself whenever it reaches the end of a user playlist, and if the user 
closes the activity while paused (no bound clients). I think we're being a good 
citizen on the device. I worry that if we add an exit button, we're 
contributing to the mistaken impression that they (and task killers) are 
necessary on Android.

Original comment by sombradesoledad on 7 Sep 2010 at 4:38

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Currently there is no way of getting the app to "close" to my definition of 
close. I am using a Nexus one, Froyo version 2.2.1

I have nothing streaming, and it is on the "home" screen in the NPR app. If I 
click Menu > close, the app does go away and returns android to the home 
screen, but the "NPR News" is still in my notification bar (suggesting that the 
app is still running to the user) this is what needs to go away. 
There does not appear to be any way to get this icon to go away, even using 
advanced task killer does not get rid of the notification, I had to restart my 
phone.

I think the fix for this would be if the app is not currently playing an audio 
steam, the notification icon should not be there (in my opinion).

I think with this change maybe the close button would not be necessary. 
Otherwise when you use the close button it needs to remove the notification bar 
icon and close the app.

Original comment by c0bra99 on 9 Nov 2010 at 7:51

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The icon should disappear when you stop playing the stream (either by pressing 
the pause button or completing playing all items on the playlist). Can you 
verify which case causes this to happen? On my Nexus One (OS 2.2.1, App 1.3.2), 
this works as designed (and as you suggest).

Note that on the N1 (or any Android 2.2 device) you can kill an app with the 
built-in controls. Settings | Applications | Manage Applications | Running; 
find NPR Android App and Force Stop. This should kill both the app and the 
playback service. You could also go to Settings | Applications | Running 
Services; select the PlaybackService for NPR Android App and Stop it.

Original comment by [email protected] on 9 Nov 2010 at 7:58

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After restarting my phone and going back into the app, it does appear that 
pressing pause removes the notification... I'm not sure what happened before, 
but it looks like something strange happened that caused the icon to get 
"stuck" in the notification bar.

I also received this error whenever I tried switching station streams:
Received Error: 1, -2147483648

Original comment by c0bra99 on 9 Nov 2010 at 7:58

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That error message is issue #2 or #6 (I'm convinced they are the same and at 
this point they are certainly conflated) and will be mostly addressed in 2.0. 
Feel free to add to the log of notes on either of those if you wish.

As for the inability to get the player icon to go away, if you run into it 
again, we'd love to get more details on it, both in terms of when it didn't 
disappear and also what the logs have. Getting the log files can be done on 
your computer if you have the development kit installed or through the 
android-log-collector app (which may also be available in the marketplace).

Original comment by [email protected] on 9 Nov 2010 at 8:13

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Can we close this issue? It's been done in the trunk.

Original comment by [email protected] on 10 Feb 2011 at 5:25

• Changed state: Fixed

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This page comes up when you search for issues with NPR app notifications. I 
also have this problem of the notification never going away. I have it now on 
my galaxy s2 skyrocket and before on my HTC aria.  Its pretty annoying.

Original comment by [email protected] on 18 Nov 2011 at 5:33

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So I've been playing around and have figured out how to recreate this problem.  
When you're listening to an audio file and then the player is killed.  For 
example, I'm listeing to the radio, decide I have to make a phone call and hit 
Advanced task killer widget, bam, it stops.  But the little icon stays there.

Going into the and out of the program, or clearing notifications does not 
remove the radio icon.  BUT! By opening NPR app and pressing the "Play" button 
at the bottom the icon will immediately dissapear. 

=)

Original comment by [email protected] on 19 Nov 2011 at 6:55