Mobile screen sizes - another naive question

Richard Gaskin ambassador at fourthworld.com
Tue Apr 28 12:05:15 EDT 2020


Thank you for your feedback, Graham.

If it takes more than a quick skim to get to the "a ha!" of using groups 
well to reduce scripting, I'll bet I can revise that to be clearer.

Help me understand something - anyone, please chime in:

Resizable windows have been around since the dawn of GUI OSes, and 
putting things where we want them by setting the rect and loc of objects 
has been central to all xTalk dialects since HC 1.0.

What parts of putting objects where you want them have been challenging?

Have most LC devs been delivering fixed-size windows all this time?

My aim with that brief tutorial is to encourage folks to use the object 
placement commands they already know to deliver UIs that behave like the 
other apps they use.

Setting loc and rect gets us there, and using groups well gets us there 
with a fraction of the code.

FullScreenMode is easy, but when you look at the apps on your phone 
you'll see very few that do anything like it.  In most other tools 
designers put things where they want them in ways that make optimal use 
of the screen, at any size screen, any ratio, in either orientation.

We can do this in LC at least as easily.  And groups make short work of 
much of it.

Why is it our community often makes apps that don't have the look and 
feel of most others with regard to object placement?

We share this level of interest in the appearance of individual 
controls, with much discussion about getting every detail as nice as we 
can make it to meet user expectations.  Heck, we even have at least five 
ways to make a simple button so we can be sure to get the exact look we 
want.

But somehow when it comes to how those controls work together to respond 
to changes in screen/window size, the interest wanes.  I'm not sure why.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems



Graham Samuel wrote:

 > Richard, thanks for these valuable insights. I am doing my best to
 > absorb them as quick as I can, meanwhile making use of FullScreen mode
 > just to get my app running before it becomes redundant. You are right,
 > it has been very difficult to gather comprehensive info on the topic
 > until now.
 >
 > Graham
 >
 >> On 27 Apr 2020, at 22:29, Richard Gaskin wrote:
 >>
 >> Graham (and Brahmanathaswami may enjoy this too):
 >>
 >> I've been itching to write a tutorial on using specific object
 >> placement ("Responsive Design", as the kids call it) to compliment
 >> the Lesson we've had for years on the other mobile layout option,
 >> FullScreenMode.
 >>
 >> I had a few minutes over the weekend, and a discussion with a new
 >> developer prompted me to craft a simple example of how groups can
 >> be used to handle common design patterns with little code.
 >>
 >> This may be fleshed out more fully in the future, but for now at
 >> least it's more than the zero tutorials we've had on it thus far:
 >>
 >> https://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=33989&start=15#p190927
 >>
 >> --
 >> Richard Gaskin
 >> Fourth World Systems






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