Design Considerations for "Tab Bar" menus

[dhnaigles]

Does anyone have any recommendations regarding the use of "use this menu as a tab bar"? Too many form views in a "Tab Bar" menu create poor visibility for each tab, but the "Tab Bar" style seems to be more intuitive than a Drill Down into the various form views. I would appreciate any comments or recommendations on the pros and cons of/consideration for each methodology.

[MarkDuignan]

You might consider using a scrollable selection. See Programming Examples -> Advanced Examples -> Scrollable Selections. These have some advantages in scrolling when the device screen is too small and you can dynamically change the content. You can also create a generic program to create them and reuse it from many form view handling programs.

[Visual_LANSA]

David,
I have been wrestling with this topic as I am working on a complex situation that has lots of information (ie a very wide list but best viewed as multiple tabs) with each entry having perhaps 20+ options that could be applied to it and the resulting screen(s) could be the same complex style or a simple flat panel.

To this end I have used the horizontal scroller approach and these screens are working prototypes (but not every option or feature has been completed and nor have the correct icons been used).

You should get the idea though.
Has Scrollable List of "tabs" Search

2012-05-09-17-38-53.jpg (242.1 KiB) Viewed 1968 times

Has optional filters (over to the right hand side provided using a Pop Over)

2012-05-09-17-39-01.jpg (261.72 KiB) Viewed 1968 times

Has Drilldown (and/or touch for default action)

2012-05-09-17-38-55.jpg (222.01 KiB) Viewed 1968 times

Has navigation Back via the Scrollable "tabs" as well as degrading nicely on mobile as well as orientation change.

All together a great product.

Cheers

[dhnaigles]

That is exactly what I am looking for. Can we get some sample code for that solution? I'm still wrestling with how to implement the horizontal scrollbar in RDMLX. Thanks.