Regarding the future desktop logger, I was looking online at the ham radio logger named “QSO Buddy“. The creator of this logger uses a novel approach to display logs using card-like summaries of each QSO, not the conventional columnar view of log fields. The log display of QSOs therefore takes very little screen space. Filtering the QSOs that are displayed in the log can be done by entering a filter combination of search text (in notes), band, mode, and date range. This novel and modern approach intrigued me yet I don’t know if it sacrifices too much not by not using the traditional columnar display of QSOs. Have the folks at Ham2K though about this alternative to log display and log filtering for the future desktop version? I would enjoy hearing your thoughts!
It’s actually QSL Buddy not QSO Buddy.
AFA space is concerned, could you expand on how you see the card layout taking up less space? Do you mean less space than the full QSO edit window in PoLO? or do you mean in the mobile view, you see only the card entry but then need to see the separate LogBook panel to see a list?
The default view is of the full QSO detail edit information and has no list view in combination (on the phone).
When I select the LogBook view on my phone, I only see 6 entries because of the other detail that is displayed. This is not as economical as far as I can see.
But the app is nice. It does not like numeric suffixes though - not sure why but CALLSIGN/1 e.g. does not log.
Alan
Hi Alan,
I was contrasting the list of completed QSOs that are displayed in the current iPad version of PoLo running on a Macbook Air. QSOs in this list are displayed with their field data (date, frequency, callsign, etc) spread across a single row; what I referred to as a traditional columnar view.. By contrast, the list of completed QSOs in QSL Buddy are not displayed in a columnar fashion. Instead each QSO is displayed in a list with each QSO represented in a multi-row card-like summary. Clicking on the edit icon of a completed QSO in QSL Buddy opens up a an edit window.
I was not referring to the iPhone display, although that still might be an interesting consideration in terms of how a list of completed QSOs are displayed.
I was curious to know if the display of completed QSOs in the future Mac desktop version of Ham2K would be consistent with the way completed QSOs are displayed today in PoLo, or if the your team was considering an alternative approach such as used in QSL Buddy.
Thanks for your thoughts,
Dan
Fair enough.
I think we need to remember the original focus for PoLo was for mobile devices and their relatively small form factor. Yes, it can work on late model apple chips and also bluestacks on Windows but these were not the primary target.
The desktop version may well be a web based interface which will offer the opportunity to provide “responsive” layouts which will increase the number of form factors it will be tuned to.
Thanks for your comments.
Alan
I think I understand what you mean, Dan.
If you look at PoLo’s spots, we do use a multi-line layout there. We could do something similar for QSOs, but like Alan pointed out, the logging screen can get really tight when the keyboard is displayed so we need a solution that allows us to at least keep a couple of QSOs visible. The spots screen does not have this problem, which is why we could go with larger rows.
And, spoiler alert, for the desktop version we’re indeed working on different row layouts depending on window size. Perhaps we can bring this back to PoLo once we’re happy with the solution.