On Nov 8, 2010, at 07:01, Vincent Habchi wrote:

> roughly, I would like to set up a view with radio buttons laid out on random 
> places (well, actually not random, but from the buttons point of view, yes). 
> I suppose I can't use a NSMatrix, so I'll have to use regular buttons 
> (mimicking radio ones) and simulate radio behavior in my controller, is that 
> right?

FWIW, I think you're making a UI mistake -- admittedly (if it *is* a mistake) a 
fairly subtle one.

It sounds like you're trying to do something roughly analogous to pins in 
MapKit. That is, you have a number of indicators, only one of which is in some 
kind of distinguished state. I think it's a mistake to think of these as radio 
buttons, even though radio button sets also have a number of indicators, only 
one of which is in some kind of distinguished state.

The problem is that the matrix-like arrangement of radio buttons is part of 
what identifies them *as* radio buttons (along with their gum-drop appearance), 
and unambiguously delineates which buttons belong to a single group. As soon as 
you randomize the geometry, you lose a lot of those semantic cues.

Thus, I'd suggest you'd end up with a better user experience by using something 
else (image views, or buttons with custom images) -- even something dot-like -- 
that isn't recognizably a standard radio button. 

Arranging for only one button to be selected at a time is fairly trivial, I 
think, so you're not going to be investing a lot of time into reinventing the 
wheel.

Incidentally, using a subview or control for each indicator is a fairly 
heavyweight solution, with performance implications if there could be a lot of 
them. It may also be better to integrate them into the drawing of the 
underlying view (I'm assuming it's a custom view). That does mean reinventing 
the correct tracking behavior when they're clicked on, but that's not too hard 
either.

As I said: FWIW


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