How can I create an inline grouped listview in windows 8
I'm trying to recreate a similar look to the Windows 8 app view and I'm having an issue with the display. If your running Windows 8 and you're on the home page, just click the down arrow icon located at the bottom of the screen. This takes you to a list of all of the applications installed on your computer grouped alphabetically. This is essentially what I'm trying to recreate visually (only my data is not apps).
What I want:
I've created a grouped ListView (alphabetical) using the html/css/js method and what I get is close, but not exact. I get "A" followed by items that start with A.... then a new column "B" followed by B items... new column "C", etc. If there are only 2 "A" items I want "B" to show up next in the list. Not in a new column. Basically, I want to override the block formatting of the display but I can't seem to figure out how. I've played around with the DOM Explorer and there are so many classes and styles I haven't been able to figure out what needs to be changed.
What my app looks like:
Has anyone else done this? Does anyone have any suggestions I can try? Thanks.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<title>Grocery List</title>
<link href="grocerylist.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<script src="/js/groceryData.js"></script>
<script src="grocerylist.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<div class="grocerylist fragment">
<header class="page-header" aria-label="Header content" role="banner">
<button class="back-button" data-win-control="WinJS.UI.BackButton"></button>
<h1 class="titlearea win-type-ellipsis">
<span class="pagetitle">Grocery List</span>
</h1>
</header>
<section class="page-section" aria-label="Main content" role="main">
<!-- Template for the grouped headers for the list -->
<div id="headerTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template" style="display: none">
<div class="simpleHeaderItem">
<h1 data-win-bind="innerText: title"></h1>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Template for each item in the list -->
<div id="mediumListIconTextTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template" style="display: none">
<div id="groceryNameTemplate">
<!-- Display the name of our food -->
<h4 data-win-bind="innerText: name"></h4>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Our list of available grocery items -->
<div id="groceryListView"
data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView"
data-win-options="{ itemDataSource : GroceryData.itemList.dataSource,
itemTemplate: select('#mediumListIconTextTemplate'),
groupDataSource: GroceryData.itemList.groups.dataSource,
groupHeaderTemplate: select('#headerTemplate'),
layout: { type : WinJS.UI.GridLayout },
itemsDraggable: true,
itemsReorderable: false }">
</div>
</section>
</div>
</body>
</html>Code added as requested. I went through all of my CSS and 100% of it is style only (colors, fonts, etc) all placement and positioning is defined in the WinJS styles which come with ListView.
In essence, the Apps view is just a standard 2D grid layout in a ListView, laid out in vertical columns first, then horizontally.
The trick is that there are two different item types: a letter/header item and an app item. This means that your data source--which in this case can be a single WinJS.Binding.List, is a single list of the apps sorted alphabetically, with then header header/letter items inserted at the appropriate points before items that start with that letter. (Remember to use globalization-sensitive collation if you're sorting alphabetically.)
With such a list, however, you cannot rely on declarative templates for your rendering, because you need to render both types of items distinctly. For this you need to use an item rendering function instead of a template. Because the rendering function gets called for each item, it can check the type and dynamically render each one according to its data. In the Apps view, an App item would be rendered with an icon and name, whereas a header/letter would be rendered with just text. The item renderer also assigns appropriate behaviors, which in the Apps view is that app items launch the app and header items do a semantic zoom out.
A rendering function is really the approach to take whenever you have a standard layout--a GridLayout again in this case--but need per-item rendering control. (This is different from a custom layout that lets you depart from the non-standard layout algorithms, and of course a custom layout can also be combined with a rendering function.)
For all the details of rendering functions, check out chapter 7 of my free ebook, Programming Windows Store Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, 2nd Edition, specifically the sections "How Templates Work with Collection Controls" and its subsections on pages 364-376, and "Template Functions (Part 2): Optimizing Item Rendering" starting on page 414 if you want to go deeper, but probably isn't necessary for your scenario.
Custom layouts, just to note, are covered in Appendix B. Also, custom layouts only work with WinJS 2.0 on Windows 8.1; template functions work with WinJS 1.0 or 2.0 on 8.0 and 8.1 both.
Anyway, with per-item rendering via a template function, you can just create CSS as appropriate for the classes in each item structure you create, so you don't have to play games with the ListView's style hierarchy. You'll just want to make sure that your header/letter items have a suitable top margin to make the gap. Alternately, you could also have a gap item type in your data source that would render a blank space and not respond to any input. Also, you'll need to style the various selected, active, and hover states of the header/letter items to be all the same so they don't get highlighted like an app item.
The last note I'll make is that you don't need to use the GridLayout's grouping capabilities at all, because that forces the groups into new columns as you've observed. That's just its layout behavior when it has a group items source. That said, you could use a standard List for your app items and a create a group data source from it like you're doing, and then use a custom layout to handle the groups differently than the standard GridLayout. That should work as well, so it's really your choice in approach. I'd use this way if for some reason you can't get the header/letter styling to work with the template function approach, or if you're targeting Windows 8.0/WinJS 1.0 and not 8.1/2.0.
Hope that explains your options.