Best scale way?

[DevBoyLars]

Hi there,
how do you handle multiple platforms like iPhone 5 and any iPad to get the best results without cutting the screen or black borders?

Autoscale seems to be nice, but how can this be useful, if the IDE gives no help for different screensizes?

So my question is: How do you handle it in the latest LiveCode 6.x if you want to build an App which should be run on such as iPhone 5 and any iPad (so devices which has different screen-proportions)?

Thank you

[DevBoyLars]

No one got an idea or can tell me how to handle this?

[Simon]

OK, I'll bite...
Hi DevBoyLars,
I take it you've seen this
http://newsletters.livecode.com/november/issue162/
The Make my app scale and Screen Densities.

The two iPads are easy but adding the iPhone 5 is the problem. If you don't want borders or padding then you would have to re-layout your app depending on "platform" and "mobilePixelDensity". (edit: maybe not with the density support)
You could use the "splash screen" approach with 2 stacks and launch the one you want after checking the platform.

I'm not really clear on your point of IDE support.

Simon

[DevBoyLars]

Wow, how bad is that? So I've still build a stack for iPhone 4/4S, one for iPhone 5 and one for the iPads (because I don't want to have a mega big tab-bar)?

So where is the use of the 'cool' scale-feature in 6.5? oO

The only way this would be helpfull is, if I can select an object and tell LiveCode that this Object has to scale proportionally. But this isn't possible -.-

[Simon]

mega big tab-bar

I haven't done the maths yet but is it mega big?

Simon

[DevBoyLars]

Yes, it is much bigger as it should be on the iPad

[DevBoyLars]

Look here:

iPhone

iPad

iPad (Retina)


set to "exactFit"

[Simon]

Ok 73 px and 56 px padding is a lot.
But making two stacks that perform the same shouldn't be that difficult?
aspect ratio 71:40... thanks Apple.

Simon

[DevBoyLars]

But it's not only two.. These would mean that the new scale-feature in 6.5 is absolutely useless, because you've always to build a stack per device/screensize.

So what is the use of this new feature!?

Just let's use this case: An App with a tab-bar and 5 buttons on it. That means I need... for iPhone, iPhone 5 and iPad...

5 stacks x 3 devices = 15 stacks only for Apple Devices - I don't want to think about Android x_x

Very frustrating, that I've still to work with very old(!) tools like altMobileResizer, which is very cool but doesn't work with MobGUI -.-

But you can tell single objects to resize OR resize proportionally, which resolves the problem.

This is a very bad mobile platform support by LiveCode and truly not what a lot of people hoped to get as RunRev announced 6.x on KickStarter

[Simon]

5 stacks x 3 devices = 15 stacks only for Apple Devices

I'm really unclear on this point?
It's just aspect ratio's you are concerned with. Maybe I'm overlooking something.


I haven't a problem with letterbox so the resolution stuff in liveCode is great for me.

Simon

[DevBoyLars]

Maybe I'm a little bit to stupid!?

What I want to do is:

Build an App with a tab-bar and 5 icons on it. So this tab-bar should appears correctly on an iPhone 4/4S, iPhone 5, all iPads and Android-devices.

If I use 'exactFit' the tab-bar will stretch on iPhone 5 and got the double size as it should be on any iPad.

Ok, now you say I could build a stack per device, right? But this would mean I've to build 5 tabs per device (aspect ratio alone would work, just look at the tab-bar on iPad with 'exactFit').

'letterBox' isn't useful, because the tab-bar would hang 'in the air'

If I use altMobileResizer, which is really great, I can't use MobGUI, which is also very useful.

So my question is: Is it really the only way to build a stack per device/AR or is there another/better way to build a simple App with a tab-bar for different devices?

[jacque]

I have never created more than one stack just to solve a resizing problem. The new scaling features should work fine, but if you want to adjust the final appearance, you can use a resizeStack handler to reposition some of the objects. That's how we used to do it before the scaling features were available (and that's what altResizer is doing too.)

I don't see anything wrong with your "exactFit" images, they look correct to me. What would you like it to do instead? There are other scaling options available if exactFit isn't what you want.

[Simon]

...they look correct to me...

I think it's the earth is oblong in the iPad versions and round on the iPhone.

Simon

[jacque]

I see...it's pretty subtle. That would probably be due to using a non-square image. Cropping the image to be exactly square would fix it.

[DevBoyLars]

That would probably be due to using a non-square image. Cropping the image to be exactly square would fix it.

I don't think that this would help much, because the screen aspect-ratio changes between iPad & iPhone 5