"The image file you tried to attach is invalid."
Just tell me I can't attach anything so then you can guess what I am trying to describe.
Anyway, this alpp is OK for short lists but trying to do grocery shopping with hundreds of items and a few dozen items on a list is just unmanagable. I started out with a dozen grocery categories, but that was a mess, so I modified my XML file and loaded everything onto one category, using some formating at the front of each entry like;
1 Fruit - Apples
1 Fruit - Bananas
1 Veggi - Lettuce
2 Dry - Soup
5 Bevg - Tonic
5 Bevg - Soda-12 pk
6 Paper - Tissues
6 Clean - Dish Detergent
7 Dairy - Eggs
8 Meat - Ground Beef
...and so on
So, now all my stuff is in one category. I still have other categories for Health/Hygene, Office Supplies, etc., but I only need to look in one place for groceries. It also make the generated list much easier to view. This setup created some new problems and suggestions to improve this app.
-My Grocery Category now has 176 items in it. Navigating "Manage items" works fine, but when I am working on a list and add a New Item, it takes 6 to 8 seconds for this category to open. My entire category XML file is only 9.6K, so I don't think that's a problem, but this does make the app painful to use. The other smaller categories open almost instantly.
EDIT: The delay only occurs when entering the second new item using my large Groceries category. So if I open the app and enter a New Item, selecting Category = Groceries, the item entry screen opens almost instantly. But then if I create a second new item and select Category = Groceries again, it takes several seconds for the item entry screen to appear. If I select a different Category (smaller list) for my second entry , it opens after a 1 second pause. Almost like the Groceries category has to unload and then reload when selecting it a second consecutive time. Hope this helps.
-When creating New Items, you have to select a category for each item. Instead, why not after creating the first item, each subsequent New Item defaults to the LAST category on the item entry screen. This would save load time (especially for me) and taps. The worst case is you have to select a different category, but that's better than selecting the same one a dozen times, over and over.
-Because my grocery category is long I have to do a lot of scrolling. I know you don''t like scroll bars, but I find myself selecting many itmes by accident when flicking the screen, especially when I have to get to the end of my long list. How about a wide semi-transparant scrollbar along the right edge of the screen. You could still see through it so its not blocking anything but you could scroll without selecting. Still plenty of real estate to select an entry.
-I mentioned this in another post, but I still can't see any counts (like 0/17) by category on my lists. All the Thumb SHopper screen shots show it, but its not on my screen. Uninstalled and reinstalled yesterday from Marketplace but no change. The counts work fine on the List View screen
Wist List - Would be nice to be able to export a list in maybe TXT format. You could then email or print a list. Something like:
List Name - Grocery SHopping
Category=Groceries
Milk
Butter
Bread
Napkins
Chicken
Category=Health
Vitamins
Not a bad app, bit needs some fine tuning to make it easy and friendly to use. Just my thoughts (the second time).
BTW, used this method today for my weekly shopping trip and it was actually enjoyable to use. Even better than using List Pro. Now I think I will get items that I purchase often, but not every week, and tick them off so I can hide them from view for next week's shopping trip. Items I only purchase seldom can be deleted and re-entered when I need them. Finally starting to get somewhere.
