Sencha Touch and long list/store performance

[bklaas]

hi all-

When loading large Stores into Lists, I've noticed that the user experience degrades rapidly in my application if the item count is > ~500 items. When loading these stores into a desktop PC webkit browser, these Lists give a marginally passable user experience. On a mobile device, e.g. a Droid X phone, it's completely unresponsive.

I expect rendering long lists is a common need amongst Sencha Touch developers. Is anyone else struggling with this issue? If so, how are you dealing with this problem? Pagination feels like a non-starter, as it would eliminate the possibility of using an alpha bar, which is a key UX component of a long, alpha-sorted list.

cheers,
#!/ben

[mrsunshine]

working with lists with > 500 records is no fun, true.
especially if you use a custom tpl which enlarge the dom, that make it s unusable.

the hardware is to slow to handle all the dom. so you have to search for alternatives to avoid long lists. start with searching and then show sublists or something else.

[MahlerFreak]

bklaas,

I think I know where you're going with this, and the answer is, you won't be able to display 10,000 tracks with interactive performance :) I've experimented a fair amount, and regardless of how you try to deliver it - raw html, JSON, whatever - the combination of large network data transfer and subsequent DOM creation/parsing and display, bring these kind of mobile processors to their knees. That includes my iPod Touch, iPad, and Galaxy S. The raw processing power is still an order of magnitude below the average "real computer". There are things you can do to speed things up some, but the problem is unavoidable at the scale of the lists present in a music control application.

As mrsunshine suggests, different, more creative user interface paradigms are required. And, good luck - I'm a SqueezeBox owner too.

[MahlerFreak]

bklaas,

If you're still monitoring this, see this thread:

http://www.sencha.com/forum/showthread.php?119185-List-performance-consolidation-thread