Roku Developer Program

Join our online forum to talk to Roku developers and fellow channel creators. Ask questions, share tips with the community, and find helpful resources.
cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
ioan
Roku Guru

KeyboardDialog, edit long lines? (longer than the Dialog's TextEditBox)

Is there a flag that I need to set to be able to edit really long lines?
By default (or by design?) if the line is longer than the width of  the Dialog's TextEditBox, there is no way to see the text or to edit it, see the picture bellow. At the end I entered all the numbers from 1 to 9, but you can only see the 5. I couldn't find a way to scroll the text to see the rest... any ideas?

https://github.com/e1ioan/
http://rokucam.com
0 Kudos
6 REPLIES 6
destruk
Binge Watcher

Re: KeyboardDialog, edit long lines? (longer than the Dialog's TextEditBox)

You could use multiple dialogs - enter first 5 letters, enter next 5 letters, etc etc.  Otherwise you are going to require a custom keyboard component or custom code to do what you want to do.
Think of your user - do you want them to type manuscripts, pages of text into the app using the roku remote?  If there are common phrases, add a button for those to the keyboard to autofill/autocomplete, like for 'comcast.net' if it's an email address.
0 Kudos
ioan
Roku Guru

Re: KeyboardDialog, edit long lines? (longer than the Dialog's TextEditBox)

"destruk" wrote:
Think of your user - do you want them to type manuscripts, pages of text into the app using the roku remote?  If there are common phrases, add a button for those to the keyboard to autofill/autocomplete, like for 'comcast.net' if it's an email address.

I know editing on roku with the remote is a pain, and I would do whatever I can to make the experience easier for my users... but the problem is a little different: I'm implementing ONVIF (open standard for the interface with IP cameras) in my application and what that means is that the application will pull from the camera whatever URL is used for streaming. The URL is filled in an edit box and then the user can leave as it is, or make modifications to it. The problem is that sometime this URL is very long and, with the current KeyboardDialog, there is no way for the users to even see the whole URL if it's something like this:

/axis-media/media.amp?videocodec=jpeg&stream_profile=balanced_jpeg&resolution=1024x768&commpresion=80

It would have been nice if the standard KeyboardDialog had some scrolling built in for the text...
https://github.com/e1ioan/
http://rokucam.com
0 Kudos
squirreltown
Roku Guru

Re: KeyboardDialog, edit long lines? (longer than the Dialog's TextEditBox)

Maybe you're trying to avoid doing this, but perhaps some sort of custom dialog that pulls those parameters out of the URL separately ( as far as the user sees) and can be adjusted. I'm guessing there are a finite number of parameters out there. A lot more work for you but as a user, i'd much prefer it to that keyboard even if I could scroll over. 
Kinetics Screensavers
0 Kudos
ioan
Roku Guru

Re: KeyboardDialog, edit long lines? (longer than the Dialog's TextEditBox)

"squirreltown" wrote:
Maybe you're trying to avoid doing this, but perhaps some sort of custom dialog that pulls those parameters out of the URL separately ( as far as the user sees) and can be adjusted. I'm guessing there are a finite number of parameters out there. A lot more work for you but as I user, i'd much prefer it to that keyboard even if I could scroll over. 

Thanks a lot for giving me ideas that now I feel I MUST implement... geez 🙂
Yeah, I guess something like that would be ideal. 
But I still feel like that's a bug in the KeyboardDialog... It shouldn't let the user type still, when the cursor is out of the view and it doesn't show what the user is typing. 
https://github.com/e1ioan/
http://rokucam.com
0 Kudos
Komag
Roku Guru

Re: KeyboardDialog, edit long lines? (longer than the Dialog's TextEditBox)

I  would definitely call it a weakness, which is why I use my own custom keyboard that wraps whatever you enter into as many lines as you want (on one screen, no vertical scrolling!)
0 Kudos
destruk
Binge Watcher

Re: KeyboardDialog, edit long lines? (longer than the Dialog's TextEditBox)

If it is a long url, another option would be to tell the user to enter it into tinyurl.com and then they will have a much shorter url to type in, perhaps with a button or pre-populated partial entry for https://tinyurl.com/  and then they just need to enter the code.
Or allow them to upload a short text file to the server with the full url and link to their user account on your service.

If you are asking users to type in words that are misspelled on purpose that could cause problems as well - commpresion ?
0 Kudos