I am working on app which have data entry form which have
Some fields with 3 drop down associated to it.
More then 25 input fields (input box, radio button, drop downs etc)
All input fields are grouped into 3 categories
My question are:
How to display field with 3 drop downs associated with it ? Because of a small screen size it cannot be displayed horizontally.
What is the best way to represent 25+ fields ? I tried scroll view and tabs but don't find it so pleasing.
For example if you consider date then it may have three drop downs for date , month and year. (Its just example I have fields different than date)
What is the good way to have fields in a category together with appealing UI.
PS: My app is related to Hospital so it has to be pleasant .Which also means I cannot use glossy background or image.
You might want to check this site for general Android UI design ideas. Here are some for your particular cases:
re-design your UI to only show what is needed. It's unlikely that all 25 fields are used all of the time. Consider separate screens for different use cases, and/or some sort of wizard-like UI (fill in the basics, press next, fill in details, etc.)
if you really need to display all of this, consider using a tablet, not a phone to run the app (assuming this is to be used in the field, and you have some control over devices).
instead of tabs, you might want to try something like ViewPager. It doesn't take as much space as tabs, and the number of views is practically unlimited.
Maybe like this...
You can use the library QuickAction which allows to create some kind of context menu.
To keep a simple screen view, you can only display the current values. Several on the same lines for the same category.
Then, if the user click on a value or category, you trigger a QuickAction with the actions available for the category or values: Edit, clear, ...
For each action, you can also show a dialog to update/fill the field which has triggered the action...
Related
I want to create 16 buttons each have different texts on it.Those text will be picked up randomly from an array depending on another random value.Lets say,
I have 3 words (apple,banana,watermelon), when the activity created it will pick up one of these words.Lets say apple.And in this activity's screen there will be 16 buttons.These buttons must have the letters that apple consists of "a","p","p","l","e" and the remaining buttons will be filled up with other remaining letters of the alphabet.
So in my case what I wonder is should i do the button creation programmatically by taking a value and assigning this value on creation one by one or do it in the xml and leave their text parts and fill up programmatically.
These 2 options in detail :
First : I'm going to create a function which takes a String value as a paramater and returns a button with this text set on it by using setText(); and then locate it in the layout.
Second : I create the layout with those button and leave blank their text parts and in the activity I only assign their letter values.
I vote for the second option but I'd like to know what's your opinion and would there be a difference in terms of performance or memory ?
The disadvantage of declarative approach is that you can get only so
far with XML.
XML is great for look and feel of your user interface, but it does not provide a great way of handling user input. That's where the programmatic approach came.
Everything you can do declarative as well as with programmatically. But java also allows you to specify what happens when the button is actually clicked.
This is the main advantage of programmatic approach to the user interface.
So what is Best ?
Here it is , Both are good at thier point.
1) Use XML , when everything about your user interface is static , such as layout of the screen , all the widget etc.
2) Then switch to the programmatic approach when user interacts with various widget in the user interface.
In other words you would use XML for what the button Looks like and
Java to specify what it does.
This is not a pure programming question; rather it has to do with implementation details. It is required to implement an order processing screen where a customer makes an order consisting of multiple items. It is a two step operation whereby the user has to enter the name of the customer (or pick a name off of a list) and enter the order details (detail block in db terminology) and likewise enter the items or pick them off of a list. How is this transaction best carried out on an Android device?
(Please note that I am not asking about the programming of db operations rather about what objects are needed on the layout in order to implement such a transaction.)
About the implementation (no code), I am trying to give the most simple yet an efficient way to do this.
Give the user a choice (maybe buttons) to either enter name of customer or choose from a list.
If the option is to enter the name, some TextViews and Buttons would do the trick.
For choosing from a list, try a ListView.
On clicking any of the ListView terms, an Activity with TextViews and Buttons to take the order details.
For choosing the items, provide a Dialog Window with check boxes beside each item names.
Hope this helps. Get back to me if you need any help with the code.
I would like to ask if my concept of implementing search in my application is correct and whether it could be improved. I will provide any details needed therefore I believe my question is well-suited for this site.
I need to implement a search over large SQLite tables (~20 columns,
possibly 1000-1500 records - you can think of it as a catalogue of
items in a supermarket). The search should be performed on more than
1 table (i.e. 1 catalogue) but I can also force the user to choose
specific table (though I would like to avoid it).
To make the search efficient, I'll use the SQLite FTS3 tables.
I want to make a fast search that will quickly show results as the user types a query string. For example, when a fragment of
product manfufacturer is entered all of the products matching that
string should be shown. The perfect solution would be if the user
could enter fragment of one column and fragment of another at the
same time, though I think that could be a little too much for an
Android device.
Questions:
Should I use a SearchView together with a a ListView (and show search results in the ListView) or should I use the AutoCompleteTextView?
Are the FTS3 tables the right way to go (i.e. will it be fast enough) to effectively perform search over several (large) tables?
I am targeting Android versions >= 3.0.
If you want to have a few line of code, you should use AutoCompleteTextView for it has ready built-in listener (ontextChangelistener -- wherein you can show the suggestions every time the text changes ) and list/ container for suggestions.You can create your own adapter to customize the design of the list.
FTS3 or FTS4 would be great in querying big amount of data.
I have a button on my home screen that will add an edit text field every time it is pushed (I limited it to 20 for best practice). It is basically a small budgeting app. I want the user to fill in an X amount of dollars in one of the fields. Then, when they are ready, to come back to the app another time and that created EditText is still there filled with the value. I know how to utilize SharedPerfrences to hold the value. I do not, however, know how to hold that newly created EditText field when the user comes back.
I am acutally going to expand and have a button and a datepicker associated with each EditText field so soon click the button will create three objects, not just one. But I want to get one working first and will apply the principle to the others later. Any suggestions?
Sounds like a good candidate for a SQLite database.
For instance, I use a SQLite database to retain and recall the co-ordinates and types of widgets that the user has arranged within my application.
Note that you don't ever want to be trying to store and recall the actual EditText View object itself. In your database you need to devise your own table format that suits the kind of information you need to store. If you simply need to retain the states of a series of EditText fields then this could be as simple as having a table with just one column that contains a string value on each row. To build your UI up again from that database, you'd loop through and create a new instance of EditText, and set the text of each one from the table.
You would have to use Android Parcelable interface, refer to this to know as of how to implement it, refer to this question which I has asked on StackOverflow, it has a good answer.
I am developing an Android App which gives users an option 'Browse Alphanumerically'. Using this option let users view the list of items starting with a particular letter or number. Problem is that I cannot decide how to implement screen for this, which can work properly on any screen size. Please suggest me the best solution.
Thanks.
What I got from your question is that you want to show all alphabets and numbers to the user so they can jump directly to a entries start with the selected alphabet or number. If this is so, then one solution to your problem is use the Button or ImageButton any make a key pad of all alphabet and numbers. Don't forget to make them flexible enough for different screen sizes. Cheers.
Use a list activity. There are lots of tutorials on Google's developer site. When you want to narrow the list, just assign the smaller list to the ListView. Just filter your master list, sort it, and assign it to your list adapter.
Hope this was helpful.