Alright, but wasn’t the tab gesture also available on the holo era?
honestly i couldn't say with absolute certainty, but i don't think so?
The benefit is less conflicting gesture triggers occupying the same area. A swipeable card/list-item has the entire card/list-card as the visible trigger. A Tab has the entire content as the trigger area. The Navigation Drawer gesture is an invisible area that can be placed on top of the visible triggers of other components.
i'm not entirely sure that i'm following this correctly, but assuming i am: it's the same number of gesture triggers
- old design
- swipe from edge: nav drawer
- swipe from anywhere: switch tabs (or whatever)
- tap back btn: navigate back
- your design
- swipe from edge: navigate back
- swipe from anywhere: nav drawer
- missing input: switch tabs (or whatever)
The issue is that the hamburger button is not the only button that can appear in that that place, a back button is common on that same area.
that's a fair criticism
The trigger area isn’t the width of a button, but the width of a very specific button, and worse, it extends far beyond the edges of the button and shares the same height as the screen.
this i'm also not sure what you're saying? it seems like a good thing to me - it takes up no space, and can be accessed from any height
I do see your point that “anywhere” isn’t an improvement, but I have to disagree, as that is fundamentally the same gesture to swap tabs, and you can predict the area trigger as being “just any old fucking where”.
i wasn't strictly saying that, i was more refuting what i thought your point was: that "it's not a discoverable gesture unless it's tutorialised, because most people won't randomly swipe in from the edge"; which i think in most instances is a very fair point, but in this specific instance i think it is discoverable because the drawer pulls in from the side. (source: i discovered it without a tutorial, or reading the md docs)