Ben, I'd recommend following Elanor's excellent native scroller tutorial in the latest RevUP newsletter for your list. Once you've wrapped your head around mobile-native controls I think you'll see that they're not difficult, and they go a long way to taking the "clunk" out of your mobile apps.
http://www.runrev.com/newsletter/february/issue148/newsletter4.php HTH Devin On Feb 11, 2013, at 5:47 AM, Ben Rubinstein wrote: > I'm making yet another attempt to get more seriously into cross-platform > mobile, having not focused on this for a long time, during which I know the > state of the art has moved forward. I'm working on a little app for in-house > use. > > I want to present the user with a list, for them to make a choice from. The > list has short titles, and longer descriptions: eg > Apple A round hard fruit > Orange A soft round fruit > Banana A long soft fruit, generally yellow > > The list may be quite long - anywhere from 5 to 30 entries. I may well want > to present users with a shorter list of usual choices, with a "more..." or > similar option to get the full list. (There are actually a bunch of these > lists, and they're somewhat dynamic, generated from data periodically > retrieved from a server.) > > On the desktop, I'd most likely just put it all in an option or popup menu, > with a tab between the short code and decription - ugly, but easy and handles > scrolling etc. If I was feeling generous I might make a more carefully > formatted scrolling field, or even a scrolling group of styled objects. > > But I don't want to do this for the desktop; I want to do it for smartphones, > iOS and Android, including 'retina' devices (not bother about iPads or other > tablets). > > On iOS, last time I looked, a standard picker will just display the short > codes in a reasonable manner. If I used the option menu approach, the > description will probably be truncated to almost nothing (and I don't think > tabs will format well). If I use the styled field approach, then it feels > clunky to the user because the field doesn't have the native scrolling feel > (ie bounce etc). > > I'm aware that in the long time since I last got into this, there's been all > sorts of developments around giving more access to native controls, and other > ways of giving a more native feel. > > I know close to nothing about how things stand on Android. I'm keen for this > app to be as cross-platform as possible - both to minimise effort, and to > demonstrate to colleagues the LC advantage. But I also want (especially for > the latter reason) for it not to be clunkly, especially on iOS. > > So given all this - what would the wise heads recommend as my approach to > this requirement, that ideally will give a good effect, on both iOS and > Android, without massive work? > > (I'm aware that an ideal solution for all constraints may well not exist, and > would welcome discussion of various approaches that represent different > compromises between these requirements.) > > Many thanks in advance, > > Ben > > _______________________________________________ > use-livecode mailing list > use-livecode@lists.runrev.com > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription > preferences: > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode Devin Asay Office of Digital Humanities Brigham Young University _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
