Scott,
How about a flag in your record that marks it either complete or
in-progress? In your conduit, you could check the flag and not sync records
that are in-progress. You could also add a menu option on the Palm app to
display a list of all in-progress records.
-- Alan
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Johnson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 1999 1:19 PM
> To: Palm Dev Forum
> Subject: Strategy for navigation & validation
>
>
> Here's a problem to think about. Say I'm writing an address book style
> application for the 2000 census. It has a Done button on the Edit form,
> uses edit-in-place on its records, the usual stuff. When the user edits
> a record and then presses (say) the Calc button, then the current record
> is saved and the organizer switches to Calc. So far so good.
>
> But then I find that if the user happens to get a record only half
> entered and forgets the ZIP (postal) code, and saves the record by
> pressing Calc, then does a HotSync, it sadly causes the government's
> Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 database to crash and lose tens of millions of
> records of 2000 census data. Not good.
>
> So we need to >force< the user to enter the ZIP code (somehow) before
> the record gets synchronized, but in a Palm Zen-like manner, where force
> is not usually considered a good thing. How?
>
> When the user taps the Done button I can pop up an alert telling them to
> go back and enter the missing ZIP code. Easy.
>
> But when the user taps Calc to save >and< exit, should I put up the same
> alert and halt the app switch? This feels wrong. The user tapped Calc
> and didn't get Calc and doesn't feel the Zen of Palm.
>
> I could change the logic so when the user taps Calc the current ZIPless
> record is >discarded< before switching to Calc, with no alerts. Then
> the user gets his Calc but also loses a record he thought got saved.
>
> Or I could do something like the previous, but pop up an alert
> confirming that the record is to be discarded before switching to Calc.
> Again, an intrusive alert and not a seamless user experience.
>
> Hey, I could even "save" the ZIPless record in a sort of limbo state
> where it won't synchronize but will be editable after the user finishes
> Calc and returns to my program.
>
> I'm not finding an elegant hand held solution. Suggestions, discussion,
> official guidelines would be appreciated.
>
> -slj-
>
>
