I’ve updated VirtualScroller (grab the latest download here). Here is the change log for the new version:

• Breaking change: The return value of the factory method now returns an object, not a View. To access the VirtualScroller view (to add it to your view or window), you need the view property of the return value. See the Wiki for more information.
• Dispose method: Call the dispose method to clean up event listeners and views used by the VirtualScroller instance. Not required but highly suggested.
• Improved anti-jitter: With this new update I can almost guarantee that your VirtualScroller instance will never end up in an invalid state. In the past, this has happened when someone scrolls the VirtualScroller too fast.
• Improved options handling: Internally, I’ve added deep option defaulting, which gives you the ability to override properties in sub-options (like top in containerDef, for example) without overriding the entire object. This functionality is similar to jQuery’s $.extend.
• Accessibility: Set touchSupported to false (the default is true) to enable support for trackball navigation of the VirtualScroller. This is useful if you plan to publish your app on Amazon Appstore, or another app store that doesn’t require devices to have touchscreens.
• Auto-focus: Set autoFocus to true and the first child of each view will be focused automatically upon viewing.

Access the updated documentation here.

I looked through the Titanium documentation and user boards, but I couldn’t find a simple way to detect whether a device has a touch screen (as opposed to a trackball). Obviously, all iDevices will have touch screens, so this code is really meant for Android and web deployments.

Here is my very primitive (but functional) solution. Place this code where the first window that your user interacts with is created.

    Titanium.App.Properties.setBool("touch", false);

    function touchStart(){
        Titanium.App.Properties.setBool("touch", true);
        self.removeEventListener("touchstart", touchStart);
    }

    self.addEventListener("touchstart", touchStart);

The first time the user touches the screen (indicating that a touch screen is present), an application-wide setting is written indicating touch support.

In the rest of your application, check for touch support with:

var hasTouchSupport = Titanium.App.Properties.setBool("touch", false);

Note: I found that it was necessary to first clear the setting, for some reason, at least during debugging on an emulator. You could probably get rid of that first line.

If anyone else is having trouble with the combo of Titanium, the Android SDK, and Windows 7 64-bit, then maybe this post if for you. It took me a few hours to get right.

Upon clicking “Android Emulator” under the Run button, I was receiving errors about jarsigner and java missing. Here’s what you have to do:

1. Titanium requires the 32-bit version of the Java SDK, even if you are running on 64-bit Windows. Furthermore, it requires Java 6; Java 7 is the default.
2. Uninstall all other versions of Java, and download Java 6 (which appears to be version 1.6, as opposed to Java 7 which appears as 1.7) for 32-bit from here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html
3. Install that.
4. Set your JAVA_HOME path by following these steps: Go to your Start Menu, right click on Computer, click Properties. Click Advanced System Settings on the left, go to the Advanced tab, and click the Environment Variables… button at the bottom. Under System Variables, and click New… Name is JAVA_HOME, and value is something like C:Program Files (x86)Javajdk1.6.0_33, with the path possibly varying depending on the exact version of Java you installed.
5. Now, add the bin directory to your PATH variable. Still in Environment Variables, under the System Variables section, find Path. Click Edit…, and in the Value box, append a semicolon if one isn’t already there. Then, append C:Program Files (x86)Javajdk1.6.0_33bin, taking note that your exact path might be a little different.
6. Click Ok twice to get out of both dialogs.
7. Restart your computer – yes, really. It simply won’t work if you don’t.

Side-rant: Why can’t Java configure the damn path variables for me? It couldn’t possibly be that hard to have the installer perform these two simple steps. I propose a new slogan. Java™ : Complexity for the sake of tradition.

Further troubleshooting

If you still get errors, then make sure you got all the paths to your JDK right. Actually navigate to the exact directory and copy the path from the address bar, instead of relying on the exact paths that I posted above.

If you still get errors, then make sure you have the right version of the JDK installed. Remember: 32-bit, Java 6 (1.6).

Time to release something new. I’ve been working on a little project to develop an Android app. I’ve chosen Titanium because the app is simple (no network connectivity, sensor interaction, maps, etc.) and the learning curve for Titanium is low.

I had been working with the Android SDK for about a week (very frustrating), and one feature I found to be missing from Titanium is a decent way to scroll through large datasets horizontally. In my case, I had a few dozen pages that needed to be scrolled. I didn’t want to plop all of them into a ScrollableView, since that would put a strain on Android. So, I created this little module.

It is based off of this GitHub gist, though it doesn’t bear much resemblance anymore. Scroll down for links to my project.

VirtualScroller

The module I created is called VirtualScroller, and you use it like this:

// Replace the path as necessary
var VirtualScroller = require('ui/common/VirtualScroller');

var virtualScroller = VirtualScroller({
    itemCount: 10,
    getView: function(i) {
        return Titanium.UI.createLabel({
            width: Titanium.UI.FILL,
            height: Titanium.UI.FILL,
            text: "This is item " + (i + 1)
        });
    },
    infinite: false
});

window.add(virtualScroller);

I’ll steal the description from my BitBucket page, since I don’t feel like writing a new one:

VirtualScroller is an easy to use Titanium module that wraps around a ScrollableView and provides finite and infinite scrolling. All items (which are actually Views) are created on-demand, and only remain in memory when needed. The ScrollableView instance has three Views, which act as containers for the actual items.

This method permits memory-efficient scrolling of large sets of views.

So, if you have a large amount of views to scroll through, but don’t want to load them into memory until they’re needed, check out my module. It supports finite and infinite scrolling, and uses a callback to generate each view only when needed.

On BitBucket:
Wiki (instructions and information)
Downloads