Vertical scrollbar on iOS

[czuch]

Hi there,

This is I guess a feature request of some sort.

On Mac I can sort my entries by creation date but then get a vertical scroll bar that runs proportionate to the relative position of the entry I’m currently viewing. On iOS that doesn’t seem to be possible and it makes it hard to scroll with precision for tables where you have a lot of entries on a single date.

Would it be possible to include a normal, index-based scrollbar instead of the current date-based one?

Thanks!

czuch

[Brendan]

What do you mean by a normal index-based scrollbar? Scrollbars aren’t a feature of iOS. But the index on the right of your records is determined by the First Sort Field. So you could change it to something Text based and that’ll change the index.

Thanks,

Brendan

[czuch]

Hi Brendan,

Thanks for your quick reply as always.

Let me try to elaborate. I’m sorting by creation date, and let’s say I have 100 records, 80 of which were created *on the same day* 2 years ago (result of an import), 10 last year and 10 this year. I still want them to be sorted by date, but the problem then is that scrolling through the first 80 records is nigh on impossible. Instead on OS X what I see is exactly the same order but a vertical scrollbar that is located at current_index/100, which allows me to comfortably use it to move around those 80 records created on the very same day.
What I’d like is something similar on iOS, that allows me to sort by date and use a Table Index that is proportional to the number of records (perhaps based on record index) just like the OS X scrollbar does.

Hope that clears it a bit.

Thanks again for your great app and support.

czuch

[Brendan]

Unfortunately there’s no vertical scrollbar control on iOS. Apple did away with them on iOS.

Is there some other criteria you can perhaps group by and then have the First Sort Field set as you do now? That way you could have the records split up into sections based on the Group Records By field, but still have them sorted by date within those groupings.

Thanks,

Brendan

[czuch]

Hi Brendan,

Unfortunately no, there is no other real criteria that I can use as a grouping or sorting field. Would it be possible to add a new sorting field in all forms that is simply the “creation index”? That would essentially reproduce the OS X behavior, and I assume you have that data in the database. So if I’ve created 100 entries, one could sort and index the Table Index by that “creation index” (1-100) so that the records would be display in linear index fashion.

Thanks again!

czuch

[Brendan]

I’m not sure what you mean by reproducing the OS X behaviour. They both work pretty much the same way other than the fact that iOS has the index on the right and OS X has it in a popup menu. OS X has scrollbars, iOS doesn’t. I can’t add scrollbars to the iOS version. And I’m not really sure what you mean by adding another sort field based on a “creation index”. Sorry for my misunderstanding.

Brendan

[czuch]

Sorry, I should’ve been a bit more descriptive.

Allow me to go back to my previous example with 100 records, and let’s assume the following creation date distribution:

records 1-80: All created on the 1st of June 2014
records 80-100: Created in one day intervals starting 20 days ago

Now the problem is that then the date Table Index displayed on the right is laid out so that 80% of the space (20 days) is dedicated to the last 20 records, while the first 80 records are almost impossible to scroll through using the Table Index because they are all crammed into a tiny space.

Visually this would look like:

| June 2014 |
| October 2015 |
| October 2015 |
| October 2015 |
| October 2015 |
| November 2015 |
| November 2015 |
…

If, however one could use that “creation index” (by that I mean the ordinal by which is created, i.e. the “row number” on a spreadsheet) to map to the Table Index instead of the date, then I would get a linear Table Index based on the number of entries, but still sorted by their creation date. So then the 80 records created all on the 1st of June 2014 would take 80% of the Table Index height:

| 10 |
| 20 |
| 30 |
| 40 |
| 50 |
| 60 |
| 70 |
| 80 |
| 90 |
| 100 |

Let me know if you still have questions, and thanks for your interest in any case!

Thanks,

czuch

[Brendan]

Hi czuch,

Ah ok, I understand now what you mean. The only trouble is that the index on the right is derived from the section headings. There’s the same number of entries on the index as there are section headings. But you probably want to keep the same section headings right? That wouldn’t be possible if they were indexed the way you would like. You could achieve what you want though by adding your own field that had incremental values in it and then sorted or grouped by that field. But then you wouldn’t be keeping your existing sort and grouping settings.

Thanks,

Brendan

[czuch]

Thanks for the reply.

Is there a way to have TapForms add that “incremental number field” that would basically map each entry to a “row” (by row I mean the number that appears in the standard multi-column view on OS X)? Or do I need to add a new field and then assign those numbers manually (seems a bit overkill since TapForms is already computing those numbers and showing them as row number on OS X).

Thanks!

czuch

[czuch]

Attached is a shot showing the number I would love to have as an automatic field type (something like “entry index”)

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[Brendan]

Those numbers aren’t fixed to the specific records. They just indicate the row number in the list and can change depending on how you’ve sorted your records. I also don’t have a table view like that on iOS. That special table view control that I’m using on OS X is what’s generating those numbers.

Thanks,

Brendan

[czuch]

Thanks for your reply.

That special table view control that I’m using on iOS is what’s generating those numbers.

You mean OS X right?

I see, although the number do become a bit important for Forms that you always sort by creation date and where you have a ton of entries with the same creation date coming from an import. In that particular case the order of records that share an exact creation date is (I assume) based on the original import order. See my other issue here: https://www.tapforms.com/forums/topic/sort-issue-with-fields-of-same-date/

I will instead follow your advice and add a number field manually.

[Brendan]

Oops. Yes, I meant OS X. I’ve edited my answer above for clarity. One thing you could do to get those numbers in there is to use Excel or Numbers to generate the list of sequential number values. Then copy them, then in the latest update of Tap Forms Mac I added the ability to paste into the multi-column list view a list of tab delimited values. Then you could set that Number field as an auto-increment field. That way you don’t have to type in the numbers manually. The Numbers or Excel fill-down functions I believe will auto-increment as you drag down the values. Just do as many as you have records for, copy and paste into Tap Forms.

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