Is anyone building business apps around here?

Business Apps
#41

In general, On a tablet, you need a software keyboard to make use of your textbox. Corona provides the ability to launch and close a native keyboard to go along with the native textbox.  There are some things you must consider when doing text entry on a tablet or phone, specifically if your users are using a software keyboard. For instance: When you place a text control at the bottom of the screen and then you bring up the software keyboard and it completely covers the text box. You cant see what is being entered. 

To understand the limitations you should really just create a native textbox and attempt to put text in it. This is very simple to do.

See the docs here: Native Documentation

#42

@ecotypes - I think it is very possible to create this kind of application with CoronaSDK and SQLite. I am using an excellent paid tutorial (no affiliation other than being a happy customer…) that covers a lot of the ground you will need to cover. I would very enthusiastically recommend you take a look. http://masteringcoronasdk.com/business-apps-using-corona-sdk-2/

#43

I hate to roll my own tab bar, but it may come down to that.

Nice idea on the snap routines - I think I need to do that as well. :slight_smile:

 Jay

#44

My AK Leads app grabs new data everyday from a server (which itself daily grabs new data from a State of AK server, parses it, and puts in in a database) and displays it using tableView, drilling down to show details (which I display on top of a scrollView for long/wide records). 

I use SQLite3 on the app so users can save records (the main display only shows last 3 days of data) and if there’s an internet connection I also save the data to my server. When they want to view their saved records I grab any new ones from the web or if there’s no connection, just show them what’s saved locally. By saving locally and to the web you can save a record on your iPhone when you’re “out in the field” and then see that record when you’re back in the office on your iPad. Basically a “poor man’s” syncing. 

I’m in the middle of updating it to take advantage of Widgets 2.0 and in the near future I have a couple more biz-type apps I’m going to be working on.

 Jay

PS - Thanks to the guys who mentioned my tutorial course. :wink:

#45

I too do business apps and games, fun having to deal with the native text boxes/text fields. I hope someday they change this, its a pain having to code work arounds for the text boxes.

#46

Just doing my first business type app with a Parse backend.

Only problem I have hit so far are text boxes and having to handle them differently to everything else.

Dave

#47

Hi,

I’m in the middle of development of business application …

I need to know if this function is available in corona sdk:

  • how to get the current default mobile number to be save in file…

can we get the native mobile number ??

#48

We’re currently building Foresee in Corona…   http://foreseetheday.com   Definitely not a game, and definitely full of network connectivity along with a whole slew of widgets  :slight_smile:

#49

@borderleap That looks awesome… I imagine Corona lends itself well to the flat design style.

#50

Thanks @no2games :slight_smile:  Sure does!  Some things that required a bit of customization to get them to work the way wanted, but really that’s pretty standard whatever framework you use…

#51

@Borderleap, your app looks great!!! Definitely what I was talking in another thread where I asked about UI guidelines for business apps on mobile platforms. Thanks for giving us a peek. 

#52

hey @ksan thanks for the comments!!  :)

#53

I am also interested in business apps and would like to join this discussion!  I am very interested in short comings developers are having with Corona (hopefully none) or hurdles to over come.  I would like to be able to access the contacts on the device for ios and concerned about the keyboard issues. 

#54

I’m also doing business apps, and agree that text fields are a pain to use.  I had problems getting consistent behaviour and appearance between iOS and Android, so tried the fake / offscreen text fields where I could control the appearance.  In the end, I abandoned that idea and implemented my own keyboard and text field, which wasn’t too complicated as I only needed a numeric keypad.  For my next app, I will need support for a full keyboard so I’m not sure what I will do.  Maybe Corona will improve their text field soon…

#55

Since all you biz app guys (and gals?) are gathered here in one spot, maybe you can help me…

I have a tableView and the user can tap a row to drill down – I use showOverlay to display the record details. I have a Back button up in the nav bar, but I’ve seen a user tap the down in the tabBar, thinking that should show them the list again (after all, that’s how they saw the list the first time, by tapping that button in the tabBar).

The problem is, since that tab button is already selected, it can’t be tapped. So the user is confused.

I was thinking I could create an invisible button (.alpha = .01) over the top of that tabBar button when the overlay is in place and close the overlay when it’s tapped, but that seems kludgey.

Is there a better way to handle that situation?

 Jay

#56

Hi Jay,

I presume your using Widget 2.0 for your tabBar? For some reason in that version you can’t tap a selected tabBar button again, whereas in Widget 1.0 you can! (at least in the one i’m using you can)

I’m not particularly sure why they would have taken that out, but you could give the older version a try and see if that helps at all.

#57

Jamie, 

AK Leads is also the “demo” for my Biz Apps Course and so I can’t use the old widget library. If not for that reason, I would have stayed with widget 1.0 for the foreseeable future. :frowning:

 Jay

#58

We removed it to match the native iOS tab bar behaviour. The fact that widget v1 did it was a bug not a design choice.

Also Widget 2.0 is now open source, so if you want to over-ride the default behaviour you can.

#59

indeed, that looks awesome!

I am also doing business apps from time to time. for my next one, i need to work with a scroll view - how is this component done in 2.0? alright?

#60

I am finding that I need to pay more attention to device screen real estate. Yes the magic config lua or a simple ZoomStretch can make the app run on all devices but that’s not good enough. A listview you design to run on the iPhone 4 for example lets say has 10 rows with 10 records displayed. When you run the app on an iPad it looks huge! Still 10 rows with 10 records displayed. I need to figure out a way to keep actual displayed font sizes comparable between platforms and put in say 20 lines if running on an iPad. Same app running on an iPhone 5 should display 11 rows perhaps.

How is the big question. display.contentWidth & display.contentHeight isn’t the ultimate answer. Anyone tackled this issue yet?