Does Windows Phone 7 need a task switcher?

August 16, 2010 | By Surur

Does Windows Phone 7 need a task switcher? Nick, a developer with a Windows Phone 7 device, is campaigning for a task switcher for windows phone 7, activated by a double click the back button.

Not that he does not like the back button. He writes:

Having spent quite a bit of time working with Windows Phone 7 on both a real device and the emulator I’ve come to the conclusion that the Back button is awesome! Now when I pick up a lesser device, that for example only has a home key, I get frustrated that I can’t go back to the application I was just in, or cancel an action that I didn’t mean.

From the many videos we have seen of Windows Phone 7 we can certainly agree the back button works very smoothly, with great performance.

However, because the back button is the only programmable button in Windows Phone 7, its behaviour is not completely predictable in applications.

He writes:

The most frustrating of these is Internet Explorer. The Back button handles two different types of Back-stacks: Firstly there is the application back-stack. This is the stack of applications that have been opened. For example if you open App1, followed by App2, App3 and App4, you’ll have a back-stack that consists of Start | App1 | App2 | App3 | Start | App4 (note that the Start appears twice in the list, once immediately before the last application on the stack, and then again at the beginning of the stack). As you press the Back button you will navigate back through the stack, progressively closing the applications, so starting at App4 you would see the Start, App3, App2, App1 and then Start again.

The second type of Back-stack is within the individual applications, and by default is made up of the pages that have been navigated to in that instance of the application… For example, within Internet Explorer, rather than opening/closing pages, the Back-stack consists of the websites that have been navigated to. As you can guess, pressing the Back button within Internet Explorer is like pressing the Back button on any desktop browser, it takes you back through the browsing history.

… the longer I spend browsing in IE, the larger the Back-stack is going to be, which is a royal pain if you want to empty the Back-stack, or you want to go back to App1 or App2.

So by now you might be thinking “quit your whinging, you can just press the Start button and then click on App1 or App2.” But here is the issue with that – because we have a “Consistent Start” experience, whenever we click on an application from the Start it will always relaunch the application as if it wasn’t already running. This means that if the application was previously in the background (or Tombstoned) it will be terminated and restarted.

Nick is not advocating for multi-tasking, but he thinks an action which allows easy switching between suspended “tombstoned” applications should be part of the next version of Windows Phone 7.

Read Nick’s full argument here.

Do our readers think Windows Phone 7 would benefit from a task switcher? Let us know below.

About Surur

Site Admin and Windows Phone enthusiast, he has been using Windows Mobile devices since before they were called PocketPC’s. He is currently sporting a HTC 7 Trophy.

l3v5y

Interestingly, IE is one of the few applications that doesn't tombstone, and does run in the background. It is a pain having the back button doing both functions in IE though.

Having a list of recently opened or something similar appear on a double tap of the start (or back) button would be great, or if say double tap on back would have the same effect as a back does normally in applications that hook the button…

GP007

I'm with you on this, I think it makes the most sense that double tapping back or holding back for a bit would bring up a list of apps/locations you've went through, then you can just jump quick to what you want. Though that said, what happens if you jump 4 apps back to App3 out of 7 and then want to go back to App7? In this sense a more advanced task switcher would fit better, also giving you the option to completely close a app that's been suspended and anything that's still running. It doesn't have to be fancy, it could just be a list, text or tiles even, with a few other things here and there.

Shawn

yes. def need task switcher!
Guest

How does voice control play into this? If you press and hold the windows key to activate the tellme service can you use that to switch between apps? Does launching an app with the tellme service close a previous version of the app running and open a new instance or will it resume the current instance of the suspended/tomstoned app?
adp

This is when we need something like the recent list from the Zune HD. But in this case, the list holds the apps that are still opened, maybe called "Running Apps", and appears at the bottom of the home screen and accessed by pressing the Home button and swipe up. That method seems fairly unobtrusive.
What do you guys think?
paschott

I'll agree with this – a task switcher is a must-have. If I want to switch between IE and Word to copy (oops- um retype maybe) notes, it would be really helpful to be able to just switch back and forth without losing my place in either. I didn't realize that everytime you re-launch an app it acts like it just started – that's pretty bad for people who just want to switch while running.

For my purposes, I typically switch between a book and an app because I'm reading and journaling. Admittedly a phone isn't ideal for this, but it works relatively well. Restarting each app from scratch each time seems counterproductive for those situations.

The example above of back-back-back-…back until you finally reach the app you want is a good one and illustrates the need for a task switcher of some sort pretty well. I don't quite know how you'd detect an "open" app as opposed to one that's truly closed, though. That could be a challenge.
vangrieg

IE's interception of the Back button is really annoying.

There could be a solution though, hitting Back in IE could bring up a page with visual history (like it does in Opera when you enable this hidden option) so you can swipe back and forth to find the page you need, but hitting the Back button once again would immediately bring you to your previous app.

toml

Or just add a task switcher.

GP007

I really expect them to add some sort of task switcher/manager at some point, maybe for 7.1 or a 7.5? But it's just one of those things we'll have to wait for, enough demand and it'll jump up on the to-do list quick though.
vangrieg

Well yes, but they won't do it.

G Yeo

On 19 July, a Boy Genius Report review of Windows Phone 7 cited the lack of an application switcher as one of the main shortcomings of Windows Phone 7. http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/07/19/microso…
chinch

Nick's argument is 100% dead on but even if you have a "task manager" an even easier/better solution is provide the option to where start/launch can first look for a tombstone and if present load the app from tombstone (not fresh clean start).

This is basic stuff, not sure where the thought process for the WP7 team was on this, but it will be an area where MS left themselves exposed.
Kevin Daly

A task switcher as such would be an unwelcome complication (people would obsess about every task hasn't been killed yet) – but an additional action to exit all the way from any application in a single step would be a good idea.

Jason

You could just have it bring up a list of recently launched programs if you double tap the windows button. Not necessarilly list only the applications that are currently tombstoned. Or give an option of the two in the device settings.

Mika

Finally! Someone sees the issue of not having a task switcher! I have been trying to bring up about this issue all along in forums but no one seems to bother with it.

Android has it. Apple implemented it. But WP7 does not even has a task switcher?! That's sucks! Just putting apps to a save state is not enough when the user cannot switch between tasks like Alt-Tab in windows.

This is another big gap that MS better to implement it before the final release. Else I will be jumping to iPhone 4 rather.
Lappy

Yes.
GAM3R

Why you bring this up so late! I already said it in many posts before this.. there will not have apps switch on lauch and years for lifetime..