Adobe AIR Development

[georg22]

Some stupid questions

I am looking for a useful way to make an application menue like the one in the UI Guidelines. 

Should i simply create a container with buttons inside and tween it, or is there something i have missed build in in the sdk?

I would like to use the same icons for "Settings" and "Help" like the one in the UI Guidelines. Will these buttons be in the sdk or do i need to create them from scratch?

When i open a "Settings" page from the App Menue - should this kind of page be a "Sheet"  with a "Cancel" button in the top left corner and a "Save" button in the top right corner? It makes sense to me but i dont know if this is recommended.

Thanks.

[jtegen · Accepted solution]

When you say "application menu" do you mean the top gesture bar?  If so, there are lots of threads on this.  Search "app bar" and/or "bezel gesture" and/or "app gesture".  Pretty easy to make.

The buttons are in the SDK, but if you are talking about the graphic in the button, then you have to supply your own.  I have asked RIM to release their examples in EPS/AI format to have more consistency, but we have not heard back regarding that request.

Things will change once we see a pattern of apps.  In thoery, it could be buttons as you described or actions in an action bar along the bottom.  Personally, I have used the top corner buttons with a label/header in between (ala Apple apps). 

[georg22]

Thanks again. In the new BB10 guidelines the app bar is called "Application menue" and i was wondering if this is a kind of new control. But when its the same like the app bar on Playbook OS i know what to do.

A page with top corner buttons and a header in between is called "Sheets" in the new guidelines. I recently read in the guidelines that sheets can be used for "tasks initiated from multiple places" - and i agree that this fits perfectly to the pages which can be opened by the Application menue - for example the settings-page.

[jtegen]

Once you get the pages setup, I've found that getting to a page do perform a task with the minimum number of actions is the best solution. You might have pages that have multiple levels. Sometimes you might want to get to the same page a few different ways. You dont (on frequent tasks) want the user to have to back up to the "main" page to get to another page.

You can also have "peek" pages (what I call "shades") that come out from the side to look at something and then can go away. The shades dont cover the full page, but is a lot nicer than having the user to have to go to a new page and then back to the original page if the information is transient or informational. However, if space is tight, a full page might be needed.

[Deevych]

Any change in this since AIR SDK Gold release?

Do we still have to build custom menu bar instead of "native" menu control?

[jtegen]

The app menu, you still need to build, but there are plenty of samples on the forum. Menu bars due to overflow actions are done for you.

[apman]

georg22, there are no icons in the SDK, but you could check out this DevBlog post for some BB10-style graphics (settings icon is there)

http://devblog.blackberry.com/2012/12/blackberry-10-icon-sets/

Also, looking at the apps that are on the Dev Alpha, Settings never seem to be done as sheets with Cancel & Save buttons at the top. They always come in from the right and are dismissed by a back button in the action bar (any new settings saved implicitely)

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My app : Get set - Get up!   Get ready for the snooze revolution.

[Deevych]

Yes, there are samples in this forum and in tutorials, but all of them are for PlayBook.

On the other hand, main menu behavior of BB10 is different - the content sometimes slides down and black shading (kind of shadow) is shown over the content.

I know we can do it all from the code, but why wasting a time for a standard UI feature???

Thanks for ActionBar, at least...