I have my page1.cs that loads 400 labels in a stacklayout which takes several seconds and am in need of a way to indicate that it is busy loading. I will most likely have other pages in my app that need the same ability.Please suggest a code for it keeping in mind I am a newbie.
You could use ACR User Dialogs. This allows you to display a loading dialog from anywhere in the application. There are plenty of examples on the GitHub repository for it as well. This blocks user input if you want, and has other types of dialogs as well, although I have only used the Loading Dialogs. The basic usage is just like this
UserDialogs.Instance.ShowLoading("Loading...");
and
UserDialogs.Instance.HideLoading();
If you want to do it for a task there is slightly different usage, but is provided in his samples. I currently am using this on Android and iOS and can assure you that they have a clean look.
Forms has a built in ActivityIndicator you can use
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Currently I am trying to build such customization of product in Bigcommerce Storefront that allows to display image with dynamic text, which was entered in Textbox. That means product image preview should be shown INSTANTLY with new image with written text.
so that the end user will know how the final product will looks like and also same image should go in shopping cart as well.
I know that there is an app on Shopify named as Product Builder.
Is this possible to do it on Bigcommerce?
Thanks in Advance
It's definitely possible with some fairly advanced client-side code. Unfortunately I don't know of any plug and play systems or apps for Bigcommerce that will achieve what you're looking for, but there are a couple ways to get a live updating product preview if you're willing to get your hands dirty.
Here's an example from my site. Click the button under "personalize this item", and you'll see a live preview image like you describe in the modal. Enter some text and change the monogram style and color, the preview image should update pretty quickly every time you change an option. A solution exactly like mine may not be feasible for you, since that site is using a pretty complex React/Redux implementation built on an extensively customized Stencil theme... it's far from a turnkey solution. That said, you could implement something similar without needing a totally custom app.
The image preview itself in the example above is powered by IMGIX.com. They offer a great service at a fantastic price. Basically my system translates the user-selected Bigcommerce option into a URL string per IMGIX's URL-based API. Displaying the live preview is then as simple as changing the image's src attribute to the corresponding IMGIX URL on every input change. I do this in a React component that consumes a Redux store, but something similar could definitely be done in the framework of your choice, or plain old vanilla JavaScript. Cloudinary offers a similar (maybe even a little bigger) feature set to IMGIX, but I found IMGIX to be a bit faster, and the pricing was considerably less for my usage.
You could also write something that uses the HTML5 canvas to overlay text and effects on an image, and thereby avoid using a third-party service. I found such a solution to be way more work and way more taxing on the client-side device, but it'd definitely be another way to skin the proverbial cat.
There may be other viable solutions out there, but the above has been my experience in implementing something similar to what you're looking for on Bigcommerce. I hope this is helpful!
I have to create mobile application for both IOS and Android.
I'm interested in use NativeSript problem is that, UI is quite complex and I'm not sure if this framework will manage this.
For my work with Js and Java is not a problem and I already have back-end side ready.
Best Regards
Luke
NativeScript can do anything a native Java/ObjC app can do; you have full access to the actual native OS controls from inside JavaScript. And all controls that are created are actually the native controls; so if you create 20 Java/ObjC controls or 20 controls in NS, they are still all the exact same type of controls as far as the Android (or iOS) runtimes are concerned, all the screen rendering is done the exact same way since NativeScript creates Native controls.
Now as to complex UI's, I have several apps with fairly complex UI's, however one thing I do is I frequently start with a single UI screen and then once happy with it I take pieces that I can and have those pieces dynamically load in/out when they are needed to keep the UI as simple (light memory usage) as much as possible. The UI can handle complex screens, but by showing less items (and eliminating any hidden items from memory) the UI is way more responsive in any language.
I was playing with Xamarin Mobile api MediaPicker which uses MediaRecorder with monodroid to make a plugin to record a video.
Android must preview the video inside a VideoView. This restriction applies to wp7 and ios too for privacy.
So, I need to get the VideoView (or Rectangle in wp7) from my custom view and setPreviewDisplay to this VideoView in my plugin (or init MediaPicker with this VideoView).
What is the best way to implement my portable plugin which requires UI element ?
Thanks in advance for your help.
What is the best way to implement my portable plugin which requires UI element ?
I guess my first question is "do you need a portable plugin?"
What is the interface that you actually need at the ViewModel layer or lower?
My guess is that the cross-platform interface that the ViewModel will see might contain just:
some control commands (things like start/stop)
some summary information - e.g. video length
a file access layer - this may be as little as a file path?
If that's the case, then I'd probably implement most of the logic within Controls/Views/UIViews in the UIs, and would then bind the relevant commands and values to those ViewModel properties.
So I wouldn't personally implement this as a plugin at all!
I've previously done a couple of apps which use video views - one for video capture (Android only), one for bar code scanning.
I found that the basic available samples worked quite well. However, once I started trying to extend them, then they became quickly fragile, they were hard to get working and they were quite frustrating to develop!
I would genuinely recommend starting your current develop as UI View code. After you've got it working, then you might find a nice way to split up the control and interface into a plugin - but I suspect that this won't be where most of your time is spent.
e.g. for my next QR code app, I plan to use the separate UI controls in https://github.com/Redth/ZxingSharp.Mobile - at the ViewModel level, I can hopefully just expose some sort of Command which acts on the decoded QR strings.
Can someone please guide me regarding which touch framework (javascript) I should use to make a tablet app? I am new to this area and I am looking for something which allows me to play with my own UI design comfortably.
I went through sencha as I heard its apt for a tablet app environment but I am (sorry, it might sound odd) not able to make out whether I can use my own UI design to make app in sencha. Or any other framework (stable) allows to use custom UI design?
There aren't any major differences between handsets and tablets, except for the screen size. For example, what you would show in a handset in one long scrolling screen, would be shown in a split-screen on a tablet (I am concentrating on the user-experience here).
Split-screen support in still rare in the jscript frameworks, since webkit browsers didn't fully support scrolling only parts of a page (i.e. an iframe or overflow:scroll divs), this support is only now starting to get materialized with iOS5 (Android already had this since 2.2, but it never worked right).
There have been other jscript solutions (like iScroll), but being client code they are not always bringing the full "experience" to the client.
The JQuery-Mobile docs have a version under testing, you can try that in a tablet/handset to see the differences.
Regarding your "own UI design", if you mean colors/icons/buttons that's possible on any framework. Where the problems start is when you want to create custom layouts, and each framework provides partial support depending on what exactly you want to achieve.
In general, I'd say Sencha totally separates you from HTML design - you build everything using JSON controls and it has an extensive events/rendering code (of course you can write your own controls), whereas frameworks like JQuery mobile work directly on the HTML (you specify data-* attributes for the details) and renders it almost the same (ok, it does adds wrapping layers, but in general it's still pure HTML).
As always, "it depends" on what you want to achieve and what you are ready to give up... ;-)
Sencha Touch (our framework) is particularly well suited to tablet apps because it has an implementation of multiple scrollable areas that works on older iOS and RIM devices, not just iOS5. But, the intention with Sencha Touch is that you create your app using the built-in UI components (carousels, momentum lists, tabs, etc.) or, if you have unique UI elements, then you will need to extend an existing component or build a custom component. If you're expecting to be able to slap some of your own HTML into innerHTML or even a Touch xTemplate, then you will be setting yourself up for failure. But the good news is that there are tutorials on doing your own components, and there are plenty of apps that you can look at the source of, in order to guide your development. Lots of people have built apps with custom UI's
You need some level of JavaScript experience to use Sencha Touch, so if you're coming from a non-JavaScript web design background, you'll have to get down the JavaScript learning curve first.
I am new to windows phone (WP7) and to me it looks like everything on WP7 is about pages. I want a small window to pop up from the bottom of a page while staying on the same page. The small window will have some controls (like slider, list etc.). It should not behave like a modal dialog box though, i.e. the rest of the page (which is not covered by the small window) should still be active and user should be able to do something there. And I want to have a separate C# class which will handle the events from the controls on the small window.
This is very easy on iPhone, using view controllers, is there something similar on windows phone?
It sounds that it would make sense to make your "pop up" part of the page with the content it is intended to manipulate content on that page. If you want to encapsulate the functionality of the "pop up" you could make it a UserControl. If you went this route then animating it to slide onto the screen will be straightforward.
Windows Phone 7 typically uses an MVVM model compared to iPhone's MVC one for app structure. The direct comparison therefore isn't appropriate. WP7 also uses a very different design language to that of the iPhone and so a straight port of application design and layout is also unlikely to create a great experience on WP7.
I'd recommend taking some time to understanding the differences in the platforms and how your existing design would be best suited to recreation on WP7. Not only will this help you create a better experience on WP7 but enable to see if this your question actually relates to something you should be doing or not.
This very much sounds like something that goes against the nature of the platform, and the general design guidelines.
If you're providing some available configuration options to the user, you should do it on a separate page, so the user can change the settings there, approve it, and then be navigated back to the previous page.
However, if you really want to, you're talking about displaying a UserControl inside a Popup. But it wouldn't be a very good user experience, and confuse most users, as it doesn't follow the same look&feel as the rest of the platform.