Should I use Table View or one long chunk of HTML for iPhone?

Question

I'm making an application for the iPhone. Essentially it'll be a guide of sorts, and all the generated information will be in one long window. Each block of information can have a 'link' in it to generate another block of connected information (for example a block about Wallace could link to a block about Gromit) that would appear at the top.

For example, at the start 1 block of data:

Wallace: Owner of Gromit

would become 2 blocks (on clicking Gromit):

Gromit: Wallace's Dog

Wallace:Owner of Gromit

Each block would also have the ability to be added to favorites list by clicking an icon. The text would need to be laid out with HTML and each block may be of a different length. A search on a different could also add a block to the top.

I'm OK with objects in 'easy' languages like PHP, but am basically new to iPhone and Cocoa, and I want to start off with the right approach here. A Table and cells looks like the correct approach, but is there any advantage of doing it as a long list (like I might do on a web version) or are there any restrictions in the way cells can hold/layout information that will cause me trouble down the line.

I believe this approach is popular for dictionaries.

I'm committed to doing it the way with a single scroll for a couple of reasons. The main one is that I want the user to be able to scroll instantly back to entries they've looked at before. i.e. the single view essentially represents a history of the data they've looked at. (if it's a lot stuff can drop off the end). Each entry will be very short but there will be a lot in total. So if the user has looked at

• Wallace
• Gromit
• The Wrong Trousers
• Cheese
• Penguin

And they are not looking at Wallace, a quick half second scroll takes them back to 'penguin'.

Answer 1

Hierarchy is the way to go on the iPhone.

Remember that the iPhone has a small screen and that users can only see a very small amount of information at anyone time. (One interface expert compared it to driving while peering down a two inch pipe with one eye.) Users can easily get lost scrolling up and down a very long list even if it has index. (That's assuming your information can be easily indexed in a form that users will instantly recognize.) It's usually easier for users to click through several views with the data in each view getting more and more specific with each level. In addition, so many apps use this hierarchal system that your users will be used to it and expect it.

System wise, its easier for the iPhone to display just one level of hierarchy at a time so your app feels more responsive. The hardware doesn't to maintain all the data in memory but just the data it needs to immediately display.

If I understand you data model correctly, you would be best off with a hierarchy of two tables and a detail view. The first table would have an list of letters A-Z. The second table would be list of all records starting with that letter. The third would be a detail view showing links to that record. So, to see the example in the OP, a user would select W-->Wallace-->(Detail) Gromit.

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Edit01:

I think you should do a test scroll of either a very long web page or UIScrollView and see how it affects performance and usability. I would caution you that layouts that seem perfectly usable and fast on laptop or desktop hardware become unusable and slow on mobiles with their weaker processors and much smaller screens. It's much more difficult to do " a quick half second scroll" back to a specific point on a long page on a mobile than on a larger screen.

You do have the option of creating a outline-like table view that inserts new indented cells as needed. I still think hierarchy is the quickest and most usable layout on a mobile.