I'm having some trouble with lengthy pop-up menus not displaying properly on the iPad. The dimensions on the iPad allow for ~21 choices to show at a time in landscape mode, and ~29 in portrait. For menus shorter than these lengths the values appear instantly when the menu is selected. For 2-3 pages of values the first page appears immediately and then subsequent values fill in after a delay, but for more than that (getting up into 60-100+ values) only the first page shows and subsequent pages are blank until you select one of the available values, after which the rest appear. It is driving me crazy and I can't seem to determine why it's not working properly. Hopefully this explanation makes sense. I'd appreciate any help I can get.

Thanks!

Justin

IMHO you're solving the wrong problem. Popup menu not a good choice for a large amount of values. Change to a picker or selection from a portal.

Or a selection from a list view (since the scroll bars a so small).

+1 list view. :)

Thanks for the input, however, what I really liked about the pop-up menu method was that the user wouldn't have to be taken to another layout. All of the data entry can be done from the primary layout. In the prior iteration of this solution I used the same pop-up method, except each value list was calculated on the fly based on the maximum value for an element. Now those calculations have all been pre-performed to limit the delay in processing on the iPad. Only since I changed the value list to be based off a static number field instead of an unstored calculation have I seen this problem.

I don't understand your value lists. Perhaps you could provide some detail as to what the choices are?

Shouldn't the value list present text values and store an ID?

The solution I'm working on is an equipment inspection app for the iPad. Each piece of equipment is evaluated in one or more categories (up to 12), which each have constant values. The grading criteria are proprietary, so here is an example data set using variables names.

Equipment | A Value | B Value | C Value | Total Equipment Value

Equip 1 | 12 | 0 | 76 | 88

Equip 2 | 0 | 15 | 0 | 15

Equip 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 6

So, for example, when the user selects Equip 3/A they would get a pop-up menu with the values 0 and 1. For Equip 3/B it would be 0, 1, and 2. For Equip 1/C it would be 0, 1, 2, ..., 74, 75, 76. The menus default to the full value so the technician only needs to select the category if there is a deficit for that equipment. It worked fine when I was referencing a calculation based on the max score in each category to create a line delimited list of each possible value, however, there was a 5-10 second delay between selecting the pop-up menu and it being populated. To try and reduce the delay I pre-calculated the value list in a separate field and the delay was eliminated, except now the menus don't work properly.

Is this the true grading criteria? If it's just a made up example, it wouldn't help you if I offered another method. That is, if each grading criteria is truly numerical--I don't understand why you need popups.

Yes, all items are scored numerically. Initially the solution used a text field where the technician would enter the value manually (with a script trigger to verify that the score was within the acceptable range), however they found that the keyboard entry could be cumbersome in the field, and if they went back to re-evaluate a piece of equipment during an inspection they were not able to determine the maximum value for that category other than by trial and error.