Re: Irregular layout of radio buttons
Re: Irregular layout of radio buttons
- Subject: Re: Irregular layout of radio buttons
- From: Quincey Morris <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 09:54:06 -0800
On Nov 8, 2010, at 07:01, Vincent Habchi wrote:
> roughly, I would like to set up a view with radio buttons laid out on random places (well, actually not random, but from the buttons point of view, yes). I suppose I can't use a NSMatrix, so I'll have to use regular buttons (mimicking radio ones) and simulate radio behavior in my controller, is that right?
FWIW, I think you're making a UI mistake -- admittedly (if it *is* a mistake) a fairly subtle one.
It sounds like you're trying to do something roughly analogous to pins in MapKit. That is, you have a number of indicators, only one of which is in some kind of distinguished state. I think it's a mistake to think of these as radio buttons, even though radio button sets also have a number of indicators, only one of which is in some kind of distinguished state.
The problem is that the matrix-like arrangement of radio buttons is part of what identifies them *as* radio buttons (along with their gum-drop appearance), and unambiguously delineates which buttons belong to a single group. As soon as you randomize the geometry, you lose a lot of those semantic cues.
Thus, I'd suggest you'd end up with a better user experience by using something else (image views, or buttons with custom images) -- even something dot-like -- that isn't recognizably a standard radio button.
Arranging for only one button to be selected at a time is fairly trivial, I think, so you're not going to be investing a lot of time into reinventing the wheel.
Incidentally, using a subview or control for each indicator is a fairly heavyweight solution, with performance implications if there could be a lot of them. It may also be better to integrate them into the drawing of the underlying view (I'm assuming it's a custom view). That does mean reinventing the correct tracking behavior when they're clicked on, but that's not too hard either.
As I said: FWIW
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