UIPickerView与新的UITableViewController

Question

What do you think is a better method for letting a user choose an item from a list with an unknown but rather small (5-20) number of items?

Should I use a UIPickerView on the current screen, or should I push a new UITableViewController and use a Checkmark to indicate the selected item (popping the controller back automatically when a selection is made)?

IMO the second alternative is better because:

(1) You get a glance of more options at the same time.

(2) Picking an item can be faster - just touching the screen, no need to scroll in many cases.

(3) UIPickerViews tend (at least for me) to scroll more than I want, which causes a frustrating back-and-forth movement :-)

But still I see many more implementations of UIPickerView.

Answer 1

Table has one flaw: as you said, you need to PUSH the view controller onto the screen. So, you are navigating a user away from its current set of data. As a result, user cannot see anything except the list with options. So, I would say picker is a better solution if you have more than one set of data on the screen (eg. in a form). Making user to navigate from the form more than once could be very confusing. TableViewController is a better solution if you have a large set of options and if you are presenting it only once (or twice).

Answer 2

It really depends on the data. If it really can all fit on one screen or if you are adding a search box, I agree that the table can be a better solution. I use both methods for different data. Something that is very sequential, like a time duration with increments of 5 minutes, seems to do better with a picker, especially if it could use multiple wheels. I use tables as multi-selects as well, with check-marks as you suggest.