To the repeater-experts here,
What are the criteria you look for to decide on going with a repeater instead of just a group of rows and columns of text boxes/fields?
I don’t need to simulate sorting on columns. But without using a repeater I’ve been able to say, change the status/text of certain fields as needed, and hide rows that are actioned on.
Am I missing some obvious advantage from going with a repeater instead? I hear there’s a performance hit when going with repeaters.
Thanks !
John
I use repeaters for everything. They’re fast to build, its quick to load excel dummy data, and if you don’t know for certain how requirements might change in the future, it’s nice to have the option ready to roll.
You can also do some pretty interesting things with them. I’ve simulated mousing up and down, 8-bit icon drawing, etc. You can get pretty crazy with them
I use them all the time too. It got to be a joke where my SMEs (who’d been trained on Axure) would ask how many repeaters I’d used in my prototype in every review.
If I have any kind of grid or list, I use repeaters because I it makes updating the prototype easier. You don’t have to worry about lining things up or making sure that all your grid cells are the same size. You can change the width of a column once and it’ll apply to the whole table.
I’ve been able to replicate a lot of interactive controls that would be a nightmare with dynamic panels, like shuttling items between lists. I’ve got one repeater that looks like a dropdown but can be built dynamically by filtering the repeater, which is much easier than hiding/showing dropdowns based on previous choices. Of course, that kind of interactivity requires getting comfortable with functions and variables, but I’ve found it to be worth it.
Interesting points for repeaters. Guess I’ll look up some dummy’s guides on repeaters this weekend.
Much apprec you guys sharing your examples of how you use repeaters.
If you have some particularly useful ones you’re willing to share, I’d certainly appreciate seeing them.
-J
I use repeaters all the time too. Like @RNilsson, it’s a joke at my office. I use them to create dropdowns, sidebars, interactive components. Basically anything where I might have to change the number of items later. Typing into a repeater dataset is so much easier than re-creating all those widgets. And if I want to make a change later, I can change it once, inside the repeater item, and then it just… works.
Of course, I also use them for data tables and lists, and things like that, where it’s essential to filter and sort. But really, they’re so flexible that I’ve started using them for all kinds of things.
Here is a file showing a simple version of a dropdown and sidebar with some of the repeater techniques that I use. Depending on what I’m trying to do, I often end up building things that are much more complex, but this is the basic idea.
repeater_samples.rp (62.0 KB)
-skb
I should also say: If I have to build anything that dynamically responds to user input (adding rows, then deleting rows, then adding more rows, typing in the rows, moving the rows around, etc), where I can’t predict what they might want to do, but the prototype needs to support it… I use repeaters for all that too.