Bottom panel on touchscreen EDGE devices

Hello, on touchscreen EDGE devices there is a bottom panel with the system buttons. If the menu is too long, an arrow up and down is displayed.

How can we access these buttons from the Connect IQ app? And don't tell me it's not possible, the Menu2Sample can do that :)

Where can I find more info? Can I access it also from a normal View, or do I need to inherit it from the Menu2 class? Is this documented somewhere?

We want to display the content that can be navigated up and down, it will be much more useful to have these buttons on the EDGE 820. Otherwise we would need to draw another panel somewhere else, and our all will not look consistent with the rest of the system.

Thank you, Tomas

  • I suspect this is something related to menus (Menu or Menu2), as when a menu is pushed, it's known if there are more menu items than will fit on the screen. When you see the arrows, does swipe up/down also work? I'm thinking the arrows are just a different way to do that.

    I don't know any way that the arrows could be enabled for just a regular view. Could you just use Menu or Menu2 for your list? That's the way I'd probably go, as then there also won't be anything special on say a 520 vs 820.
  • The Menu2 is supported only with the 3.0.0 SDK, so it does not work on the Edge 1000 / Explore.

    But yes, the arrows are also displayed with the original Menu component.

    Thinking about how it can be "hacked", so the click on the button will change the content of the window (like a page 1, page 2)… But maybe I should not try to do that :)
  • With the button bar on the devices I've tried, that's drawn after the app does it's thing in onUpdate, so you can't draw your own buttons on top of the button bar. I try to stay with what's common between touch (the 820) and non-touch (the 520), with the only real exception being the Oregon/Rino where I have a screen button, as they don't have a start/enter button, and onSelect can be anywhere on the screen, which I think could be prone to error. With the button, I can make sure the onTap is in the proper place.
  • The button bar is not part of ConnectIQ, it is part of the device firmware. You don't really get much control over what it does or does not do, this is all handled by the device. As Jim is suggesting, you could use a button bar.