Could I create a PR for an alphabetical scrollbar on the mobile apps?

Feature name:

Alphabetical scrollbar

Feature Description

@kspearrin this was a feature I used to love on 1password, is this something you would approve of? If so, I will work on a PR ASAP.

Clients / Repos Affected:

  • Mobile

Timeline to completion (estimate):

ETA: Q2/2021

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I think this would be a nice feature. Calling @cscharf

@cwille97 Our mobile app is built with Xamarin.Forms, which provides an abstraction over native iOS and Android components. Just a heads up that you’d have to figure out how to do this in a way that would play nicely with the native components of both platforms.

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I haven’t worked with Xamarin before so that is an extra challenge but I’d still be interested in taking a shot at this feature.

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Hi @cwille97 , while I’m not opposed to this, I would be curious how you would envision that looking or working in context of the current context menu buttons displayed on each row (...), as well as “really long” names in the list as can happen especially with non-English languages and how that would be handled with other alphabets as far as vertical scroll-space.

With those considerations, from the screen shot on the linked SO page provided, I’m not really familiar with how that list is actioned (can you click on a letter from the list to scroll to that section? how large is the tap-target on that, it looks pretty small, etc.)

If we’re talking about a permanent “squishing” of the current item list to add this (vs. it’s floating somehow). I’m hesitant to throw in another option flag as well to make this optional due to risk of overcomplicating our app overall.

Curious to get your feedback and thoughts. Thanks!

Hey @cscharf ,

I see your point about running out of space. A workaround would be changing the context menu to work via press-and-hold, though I’m not sure how our average user feels about that vs the existing button. Alternatively the context menu button could be moved to the other side appearing before the icon. The drawback there is worse one-handed reachability.

The tap-target is pretty small, but in other apps I’ve never had a problem with accuracy and often find myself swiping down the bar as a quick way to get around.

I agree regarding squishing this in or adding a feature flag. It sounds like this probably doesn’t make sense from a UI / UX perspective unless you think moving that context menu to the left side wouldn’t bother people.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I’m leaning a bit towards the “not now” angle, although any kind of refresh or UX brush-ups we do in the future we could certainly consider this.

That’s a tough one to gauge, often times people get upset over an icon color change, etc. so anything drastic to the UX itself would need some careful thought, PoC and perhaps some MVP feedback testing, etc.

Please let me know if you come up with any other thoughts on this, I’m certainly open and @mportune may know another way this could work.

Sounds reasonable to me, if I think of another way to make it work I can mock it up with a design tool and share here. Thanks for considering!

It would be nice to see if this could be revived - its a simple and key bit of functionality for any mobile app like this that has potential long lists of entries (and it’s present in most , if not all, of the competitor’s mobile apps from what I have experienced or have read). There is an existing FR from prior to this discussion still open for it: An alphabetical jumplist - what are the chances of a revival?

It ideally would be great if it also addresses the similar keyboard alphabetical jump functionality described here: Jump to location in list? (and FWIW in my recent post here: Alphabetical Fast Access In Item Lists).

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