This is one point that I'm am at odds on with the Platium certification. It seems
that this and other UI requirements has created in impass with myself and other
developers. Oddly, my customers (a.k.a. cash flow), have specifically requested NOT
to have shortcuts for app to help some very citicial data from accidentally being lost.
It has become a dilemma where my customers want one thing but shipping this will not
pass Platium certification because of a style issue.
I can see an advantage on a certification process for inspecting things like memory
leaks and compatibility with differnt OS version. However, I really consider the
style rules too critical for such a simple user interface as the Palm. Another thing
I find is that almost none of my customers are even aware that such a certification
process exists and thus don't even take it into consideration when buying Palm
software. Weather this is on purpose at Palm to
not hinder apps from being realized is conjecture.
Frankly, I believe a very hard review of the Platinum Certification requirements by
Palm and developers like us are very much in order. The market for these handheld
devices have changed a lot since thise specifications were written over a year ago. I
would love to hear others comments on this.
Steve
ScorePAD Support wrote:
> Are you sure? Have your apps passed Platinum testing without shortcuts on all menu
>item? We were asked to have a shortcut for every menu item in the documentation that
>explained why our app failed the testing. We added shortcuts and passed the testing
>in 8/99. The specification reads:
>
> For each menu command, verify a unique shortcut is assigned. Only About <appname>
>does not require one...
>
> However, we have added more menu items now.
>
> By the way, we have a menu item that wipes out an atbat's data (not undoable) and
>we didn't want to assign it a shortcut. They told us to use a number as a shortcut
>but that all menu items must have a shortcut.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Sabram [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2000 2:23 PM
> To: Palm Developer Forum
> Subject: Re: Menu shortcut delima
>
> You don't have to have ALL of your menu options take a shortcut. I suggest you
>make, under your assumption, the seven least used items not have a shortcut and call
>it at that. One of our apps has fifteen menu items and only twelve of them have
>shortcuts.. The ones that you usually don't want to shortcut are commands connected
>with deletion to keep a bad graffiti pen stroke from accidentally removing something.
>
> Steve
>
> ScorePAD Support wrote:
>
> > I have run out of menu shortcuts. I've used A-Z and 0-9 and I still have 7 menu
>items left. The Palm Platinum UI spec requires that menu shortcuts be unique
>throughout the entire app. Once you use a shortcut, it can only be reused on another
>screen for the exact same menu function. We had to have our app re-tested after
>passing the Gremlin, memory leak, beaming, and other difficult tests simply for menu
>shortcuts and we don't want that to happen again.
> >
> > Thanks for your help.
> >
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