Opinion needed : Display at list of X items N at a time

I have a “list” of images to display. The screen can display various amounts depending on the device (for example the iPhone displays 1 row of 2 items, but the mac shows 3 rows of 3 items etc)

Any way… regardless of the device N items are on the screen. The user then has the option of scrolling left or right for the next “Page” of images.

The question is when the end is reached or exceeded.
For example… say there are 30 items, shown 9 at a time
the screen would start like this

[00][01][02]
[03][04][05]
[06][07][08]

each scroll to the right increased the index pointer by 6
at one point looking like this

[18][19][20]
[21][22][23]
[24][25][26]

should the NEXT page show EMPTY CELLS?

[27][28][29]
[..][..][..]
[..][..][..]

or should it adjust the index and reshow PART of the previous page?

[21][22][23]
[24][25][26]
[27][28][29]

here 21 thru 26 are shown “again”, bearing in mind leaving “blanks” could show only 1 image depending on what the total number available is.

the grid sizes are (based on the device)

  • 2 x 1 - iPhones
  • 3 x 2 - most iPads
  • 4 x 3 - 12.9 iPad and mac desktop
    not sure yet what the AppleTV will do

the number of images will vary from 10 to 30

I think empty cells at the end transmit the message of “we have reached the end, there are no more items to be listed”. If I see a fully populated list I would be tempted to keep scrolling. But that’s probably just me.

yeah, thats what I’m toying with… on one hand your right (although the arrow key will vanish), but then if the last page only contains one or two items it looks funky, and I have to add logic to insure that if they tap an “empty” space it is ignored (which is easy to do)

Right now the max list has 30 items, and the mac displays 12 at a time.
that is [12][12][6]
the 9.7" iPad is only 6 at a time… so it will display 5 full pages

Adjusting the index on the last page would be confusing for me. I’d constantly be thinking I had duplicate images.

1 Like

well that TWO against my ONE … which is why I asked :slight_smile:
Thanks

Agree with BillG here, showing empty cells would be an indicator that there is no more to show.

Don’t forget elastic scrolling will also aid the user in knowing when they’ve reached the end. It is one of those things that you don’t realize until it’s gone.

“elastic scrolling”

I opted not to use an NSSCrollview… just static NSImageviews since it was limited content

Note : this is with placeholder images… still working on creating the “real ones”

You don’t need a NSScrollView, elastic scrolling is part of the scrolling mechanism. NSScrollView just makes it easy.

For the empty slots, you could show a dimmed outline to indicate ‘nothing’ here. Totally blank may look like a display error.

good idea