Re: [android-developers] Re: Is there a Horizontal ListView?

2010-12-29 Thread Richard Leggett
I did some digging around this a while back and Mark is on the money, it'll 
take a big chunk of time. But I would agree there are plenty of uses for things 
like horizontal lists, in fact there's a very prominent one in the core SMS app 
which allows you to choose a word from a list of predictions. So in answer to 
the question, perhaps you can make use of the code for that to give you a head 
start, found in:

  CandidateView.java

This doesn't extend ListView, or BaseAdapterView but simply View.

I had to slightly modify ListView and ended up having to jump through many 
hoops to make a small change, I'm finishing up an app which has very styled 
user interface elements and I've found the SDK makes creating custom components 
very easy, but extending existing components is very hard because it is 
understandably restrictive. This is quite often than not to do with ListView 
because it has so much useful functionality baked in to support adapters, 
states, touch, keyboard and trackball input that is just frustrating to 
re-implement. It's a problem because we want to be creating more expressive UIs 
where it improves on the standard, right now that usually means spending an 
great deal of time studying the source code and seeing if it can be achieved 
through composition or existing methods (sometimes over-complicating the view 
hierarchy) and more often copying the entire source code for one (often two) 
base classes so that you can modify a key private field and not lose out on 
performance. 

The easy answer is to just stick to the basics UIs we're used to seeing, but I 
really hope things get a bit more flexible so that more people can creative 
compelling-looking apps that don't just look like they've been put together in 
a drag and drop GUI form builder.

Regards,
Richard

On 25 Dec 2010, at 23:41, Mark Murphy wrote:

 On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 6:27 PM, jotobjects jotobje...@gmail.com wrote:
 But UI designers don't
 take the API doesn't do that as a reason for changing the design.
 
 UI designers can ask for whatever they want. It is up to engineers to
 explain to management that the designers are asking for things that
 are not natively implemented on the platform and therefore will
 require significant additional engineering time. It is then
 management's responsibility to determine whether the UI designers
 feature is worth that additional engineering time.
 
 There are lots of posts in this forum with developers asking for
 horizontal scrolling and horizontal list views.  It's a natural UI
 design element for some kinds of lists. It behaves somewhat like a
 drop down list (in that is is expandable) without obscuring the other
 widgets on the screen.  The user can drag it (scroll) back and forth.
 
 I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I am saying you have your work cut out
 for you, and I am saying that I believe that it has not been done a
 100 times already.
 
 -- 
 Mark Murphy (a Commons Guy)
 http://commonsware.com | http://github.com/commonsguy
 http://commonsware.com/blog | http://twitter.com/commonsguy
 
 Android Training in Atlanta: http://bignerdranch.com/classes/android
 
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[android-developers] Re: Is there a Horizontal ListView?

2010-12-25 Thread jotobjects
I wonder if if would be better to modify Gallery or ListView to get a
HorizontalListView?

Even after cutting out the header/footer stuff there are lots of top/
bottom and up/down details in ListView that would need to change.
Fundamentally there doesn't seem to be a reason for ListView to not
work horizontally...

Also I gotta wonder if this has not been done a 100 times already.

On Dec 25, 2:06 pm, Mark Murphy mmur...@commonsware.com wrote:
 On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 5:00 PM, jotobjects jotobje...@gmail.com wrote:
  There is apparently no horizontal ListView?

 Correct.

 --
 Mark Murphy (a Commons 
 Guy)http://commonsware.com|http://github.com/commonsguyhttp://commonsware.com/blog|http://twitter.com/commonsguy

 Android 2.2 Programming Books:http://commonsware.com/books

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Re: [android-developers] Re: Is there a Horizontal ListView?

2010-12-25 Thread Mark Murphy
On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 6:06 PM, jotobjects jotobje...@gmail.com wrote:
 Also I gotta wonder if this has not been done a 100 times already.

Considering that I have never seen anything in any Android app that
screams this is a horizontal-style ListView-esque thing, and since I
don't remember ever hearing of anyone writing one, and considering how
awful the ListView/AbsListView code is, I suspect that there are not
100 existing implementations of your concept. But, that's just a
guess.

-- 
Mark Murphy (a Commons Guy)
http://commonsware.com | http://github.com/commonsguy
http://commonsware.com/blog | http://twitter.com/commonsguy

Android Training in Atlanta: http://bignerdranch.com/classes/android

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[android-developers] Re: Is there a Horizontal ListView?

2010-12-25 Thread jotobjects
I guess you can say any particular widget is not necessary because the
functionally can be done in a different way.  But UI designers don't
take the API doesn't do that as a reason for changing the design.

There are lots of posts in this forum with developers asking for
horizontal scrolling and horizontal list views.  It's a natural UI
design element for some kinds of lists. It behaves somewhat like a
drop down list (in that is is expandable) without obscuring the other
widgets on the screen.  The user can drag it (scroll) back and forth.

I just completed an app for a client that is on the market which makes
heavy use of horizontal list views.  This was done with Gallery but
the drawbacks are as noted above.  Gallery doesn't quite act like a
list because the focus is always centered.

On Dec 25, 3:10 pm, Mark Murphy mmur...@commonsware.com wrote:
 On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 6:06 PM, jotobjects jotobje...@gmail.com wrote:
  Also I gotta wonder if this has not been done a 100 times already.

 Considering that I have never seen anything in any Android app that
 screams this is a horizontal-style ListView-esque thing, and since I
 don't remember ever hearing of anyone writing one, and considering how
 awful the ListView/AbsListView code is, I suspect that there are not
 100 existing implementations of your concept. But, that's just a
 guess.

 --
 Mark Murphy (a Commons 
 Guy)http://commonsware.com|http://github.com/commonsguyhttp://commonsware.com/blog|http://twitter.com/commonsguy

 Android Training in Atlanta:http://bignerdranch.com/classes/android

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Re: [android-developers] Re: Is there a Horizontal ListView?

2010-12-25 Thread Mark Murphy
On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 6:27 PM, jotobjects jotobje...@gmail.com wrote:
 But UI designers don't
 take the API doesn't do that as a reason for changing the design.

UI designers can ask for whatever they want. It is up to engineers to
explain to management that the designers are asking for things that
are not natively implemented on the platform and therefore will
require significant additional engineering time. It is then
management's responsibility to determine whether the UI designers
feature is worth that additional engineering time.

 There are lots of posts in this forum with developers asking for
 horizontal scrolling and horizontal list views.  It's a natural UI
 design element for some kinds of lists. It behaves somewhat like a
 drop down list (in that is is expandable) without obscuring the other
 widgets on the screen.  The user can drag it (scroll) back and forth.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I am saying you have your work cut out
for you, and I am saying that I believe that it has not been done a
100 times already.

-- 
Mark Murphy (a Commons Guy)
http://commonsware.com | http://github.com/commonsguy
http://commonsware.com/blog | http://twitter.com/commonsguy

Android Training in Atlanta: http://bignerdranch.com/classes/android

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