The new trend of side navigation menus has taken over Android apps - Facebook, Evernote and now youtube and google+ are all doing the side navigation menu like here:
Though it seems like this has been around for a while, looks like its picking up and there was even a question by a developer at the android fireside chat at Google I/O 2012 about whether this component would go into the developer library.
Now I am developing for tablets and it seems like this is a good idea to implement as a developer. But I am not a UX guy and I wonder if this works as well for tablets as it does for phones. I know fragments are a better approach as I have been reading everywhere, but to me this seems pretty nice to have in a tablet also and dont see the problem with it. My question is two fold:
- Is this is a good UI pattern for Tablets (10.1 inch)? If not what better alternatives are there since I have a pretty deep hierarchical levels of navigation.
- Are there more patterns similar to this which help render say table of contents more effectively in Android?