Radio Buttons look awful...

The place to discuss anything and everything about running your LiveCode on Android

Moderators: FourthWorld, heatherlaine, Klaus, kevinmiller, robinmiller

Post Reply
tjo7777
Posts: 34
Joined: Fri May 02, 2014 9:16 pm

Radio Buttons look awful...

Post by tjo7777 » Sat Jun 03, 2017 4:49 am

I used radio buttons on Android today and they look terrible. Rather than the circle with a dot in the center to indicate it's hilited they are a black diamond outline which is filled in solid black when hilited.

I know you can create your own icons, but I don't understand why the default one looks so bad. Am I missing something? Is there an easy way to make my radio buttons on Android look like normal radio buttons, or do I need to make my own?

I really like LiveCode. I used the community edition for a while and recently purchased an Indy license. But it's frustrating when you have to stop coding and try to be a graphic designer just to get something as basic as a radio button to look decent. The default radio buttons give your app a Windows 95 look and feel.

I hate to complain and I don't mean to come off sounding like a whining ass with entitlement issues, but for something as commonly used as a radio button can't the default be made to look a bit better?

TJ.

FourthWorld
VIP Livecode Opensource Backer
VIP Livecode Opensource Backer
Posts: 9801
Joined: Sat Apr 08, 2006 7:05 am
Location: Los Angeles
Contact:

Re: Radio Buttons look awful...

Post by FourthWorld » Sat Jun 03, 2017 5:18 am

Radio buttons are seldom used on mobile. Too little space. Consider a button that uses a mobile picker instead.
Richard Gaskin
LiveCode development, training, and consulting services: Fourth World Systems
LiveCode Group on Facebook
LiveCode Group on LinkedIn

AxWald
Posts: 578
Joined: Thu Mar 06, 2014 2:57 pm

Re: Radio Buttons look awful...

Post by AxWald » Sat Jun 03, 2017 10:24 am

Hi,

for Android style icons look here.

Have fun!
All code published by me here was created with Community Editions of LC (thus is GPLv3).
If you use it in closed source projects, or for the Apple AppStore, or with XCode
you'll violate some license terms - read your relevant EULAs & Licenses!

tjo7777
Posts: 34
Joined: Fri May 02, 2014 9:16 pm

Re: Radio Buttons look awful...

Post by tjo7777 » Sat Jun 03, 2017 6:19 pm

Thanks for the suggestions, much appreciated. For my application the user has just two choices, and can only select one or the other, so radio buttons make sense and would be faster for the user than a mobile picker.

Checking out the icons at material.io, these look like what I was hoping for. But still, why not just use something like these for the default Android radio button, the diamond shaped checkboxes don't look good imo. Seems like a small improvement, and again I know you can customize this as much as you want, but still it would be nice if the default was something that looks like what you expect a radio button to look like. Just my two cents.

Thanks again,

TJ.

FourthWorld
VIP Livecode Opensource Backer
VIP Livecode Opensource Backer
Posts: 9801
Joined: Sat Apr 08, 2006 7:05 am
Location: Los Angeles
Contact:

Re: Radio Buttons look awful...

Post by FourthWorld » Sat Jun 03, 2017 8:37 pm

With just two choices I might use two rectangular buttons, grouped with the radioBehavior set.
Richard Gaskin
LiveCode development, training, and consulting services: Fourth World Systems
LiveCode Group on Facebook
LiveCode Group on LinkedIn

jacque
VIP Livecode Opensource Backer
VIP Livecode Opensource Backer
Posts: 7210
Joined: Sat Apr 08, 2006 8:31 pm
Location: Minneapolis MN
Contact:

Re: Radio Buttons look awful...

Post by jacque » Sun Jun 04, 2017 4:08 pm

RadioBehavior only works with radio buttons, so rectangular ones would still require scripted toggles. With only two choices this wouldn't be very much work.

But if I remember right, you can supply your own icon for a radio button which will replace the default. You'll need two icons, one for each hilite state, and assign those in the icon pane of the property inspector.
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw dot com
HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com

jmburnod
VIP Livecode Opensource Backer
VIP Livecode Opensource Backer
Posts: 2718
Joined: Sat Dec 22, 2007 5:35 pm
Location: Genève
Contact:

Re: Radio Buttons look awful...

Post by jmburnod » Sun Jun 04, 2017 10:43 pm

What Jacqueline said.
Here is a stack with custom radios buttons in a group.
Best regards
Jean-Marc
Attachments
stRadioButtton.zip
(7.69 KiB) Downloaded 279 times
https://alternatic.ch

sphere
Posts: 1145
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2014 10:32 am
Location: Earth, Except when i Jump

Re: Radio Buttons look awful...

Post by sphere » Mon Jul 10, 2017 7:20 pm

ah great.
I thought this was not possible with radiobuttons.
The original are so tiny when deployed on a phone.

Texter
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2018 5:17 pm

Re: Radio Buttons look awful...

Post by Texter » Mon Jun 18, 2018 5:30 pm

@jmburnod

Hi Jean-Marc

I am a newbie at Livecode and also my english is not the best.

I downloaded your Radio Buttons and tryed to implement on my stack by copy and paste.

Worked fine until I saved the stack and opened again. The Buttons where gone! But only the the image was not there.

How do I implement your Buttons correct? Where do I put the two images?

Hope you can give me a step by step instruction.

Texter

jmburnod
VIP Livecode Opensource Backer
VIP Livecode Opensource Backer
Posts: 2718
Joined: Sat Dec 22, 2007 5:35 pm
Location: Genève
Contact:

Re: Radio Buttons look awful...

Post by jmburnod » Mon Jun 18, 2018 6:52 pm

Hi Texter,
Welcome to this forum.
my english is not the best
Sometimes, some users of this forum watch my progress :D
Worked fine until I saved the stack and opened again. The Buttons where gone! But only the the image was not there.
How do I implement your Buttons correct? Where do I put the two images?
Yes, you also have to copy/paste images "iRadio" and "iRadioHi" and set icon and hiliteIcon of your radio btn to the id of images
Best regards
Jean-Marc
https://alternatic.ch

Texter
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2018 5:17 pm

Re: Radio Buttons look awful...

Post by Texter » Mon Jun 18, 2018 8:23 pm

Hi Jean-Marc

I had the wrong ID. LC changed the ID at the moment I copied them.

But one thing I still don´t know. Where do you put in the images?

Thanks

Texter

Klaus
Posts: 13793
Joined: Sat Apr 08, 2006 8:41 am
Location: Germany
Contact:

Re: Radio Buttons look awful...

Post by Klaus » Mon Jun 18, 2018 8:44 pm

Hi Texter,
Texter wrote:
Mon Jun 18, 2018 8:23 pm
But one thing I still don´t know. Where do you put in the images?
you can put them anywhere in your stack on any card you like. Maybe on a card in your app that the user will never see.
AND you can even hide them, they will be displayed in the button anyway!

Hint:
To avoid ID conflicts (wrong image in button!), you should keep all of the images for your project on ONE card
in either the mainstack or any substack, but nowhere else!

Best

Klaus

Texter
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2018 5:17 pm

Re: Radio Buttons look awful...

Post by Texter » Mon Jun 18, 2018 9:13 pm

Hi Klaus

Danke sehr. Eigentlich simple aber man denkt dann einfach zu kompliziert.
Thank you very much. Actually simple but I was thinking to complicate.

Habs jetzt hinbekommen. Muss nur noch eine nicht benutze Card einfügen.
Done now. All I have to do now is to insert an unused card.

Texter

PS Habe noch ein Problem, aber das mache ich extra weil es nicht zu diesem Problem gehört. Vielleicht kannst du mir ja da auch helfen
PS Still have another problem, but I do it seperate because it does not belong to this problem. Maybe you can help me there as well

Post Reply

Return to “Android Deployment”