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I am new to Android development. I am working on application where Sql-lite is also involved, its a database application. The application is used on Android Tablets

In of the screen we have a lot of "related information", nearly 100 different controls (Text Data, DateTime Data, Selection list) are used to load that data, the user enters the data & can perform the CRUD operations on it. Currently i am using the ScrollView Layout as the main container for that screen.

The application is running smoothly no performance issue but the users saying we are tired of scrolling up & down all the time.

1- I need your suggestions how to resolve this issue?

2- Should i divide the information into more than one screen & what is the best solution? (For example each screen can have Forward Backward Arrows etc.)

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If you have 100+ different controls and users are repeatedly accessing different controls but having to scroll up and down all the time then you need to think about someway of making the experience better for any given user irrespective of which controls they use.

So, depending on your context, and how users are choosing which controls to use you might want to consider combinations of the following:

  • grouping similar or related controls
  • shortcut buttons to go directly to group
  • ability to collapse (and expand) groups of controls which are not of interest - accordion style
  • marking controls as favourites, to be accessible via a single page
  • providing a history of recently changed controls

Wrt to accordions, I happen to quite like the in-place scrolling accordian effect of PushButton's implementation of the BBC iPlayer for BTVision (see right hand side of screen during the animation at the top of page). This could be adapted for touch, swipe and gestures to multiply the effect of an up/down swipe to scroll through more content than a fixed page layout.

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Consider left right page navigation - not just by swipe but by tap - similar to the dots used on an android phone's main screen:

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Also consider the option of wrapping content - up/down and left/right. It's always annoying to be at the top or bottom of a long page of ordered content and have to scroll all the way up to get to the beginning for example, when you could just scroll down a single page. You'd have to clearly indicate that content is wrapping but that's easy enough with a suitable graphic. Alternatively as mentioned above use suitable shortcut buttons. 'back-to-top' buttons are the basic implementation of this kind of feature, but that on it's own doesn't achieve your needs I suspect.

Another option - combine up down and left right navigation. Like many Android news apps where you can scroll sections of the screen left and right as well as scroll up and down through the sections, but with each section keping it's horizontal scroll position rather than snapping back to the beginning.

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Hard to say without actually seeing your App, but dividing content would be ok. Consider left-right horizontal scrolling, which might be more convenient on tablet. If you have many controls filtering content you might consider using hidden navigation just like on Facebook iPad App (screen from Ubergizmo).

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