©2000 Nemesys
Software. All rights reserved.
The basis for an optimal use is to make sure that each item is properly located, according to the store's layout. The location of an item start with the sections. So, when you modify the sections, you have a numeric field called "Store occurence". This lets you numerically position the section in the store, depending on the layout. Then, back in the detail view, you have the fields "Aisle" and "Aisle occ." (for occurence). The "Aisle" is a numeric value to further precisely locate an item within a section. For instance, most grocery stores I've went to have multiple aisles (or isles?) in the Fruit and Veggie section. That's what the "Aisle" field is for. Finally, whithin the aisle, you can have multiple items. The "Aisle occurence" lets you determine which item comes first when walking in this aisle. All the benefit of this is when you switch to overview. If you carefully represented the store layout using these fields, picking the right sort order will put all the items in the order you will find them, while cruising in the store.
Now, switch to the overview. Don't forget the little icon to the left of each item, whether it's the "grocery cart" or the question mark. This tells you if a given item has been found or not. Initially all items should not be found. You can easily flag them out by tapping the "All" button in the overview. Make sure that the first item in the list is flagged as being found (the grocery cart with the check mark on it). Then, go to the routing popup, on the bottom right of the screen, next to the close box. There should be an option in this popup that will be labeled "Item Not Found". Selecting this option will flag all the selected items as being not found. Make sure the "Sort" popup selected option is "by Store/Section/Aisle/Occ.". Then, select "Items Not Found" from the "Show" popup. Then everytime you find an item, tap the little question mark to the left of the item. The item will disapear from the list, leaving only the items to be found. The cumulative total will also add the price of this item to its running total, at the top of the screen. I'm still talking about the overview here. That's the main part to use when shopping. BTW, if you need to do some management with your items, I suggest you create 2 folders (only in NewtGrocery) for each store you're planning to go. Name the first one with the name of the store, and add active to the name. The other one should have also the name of the store, but with inactive. So, you would end up with something like "Costco Active" and "Costco Inactive". Move the items you don't need to the inactive folder, and keep the ones you need in the active folder. Do this for any store and you'll be more effective. Finally, don't forget that in the overview, you can change what is displayed in each column, and you can also modify the width of those columns. Tap the header of a given column and you'll see what I mean.
Owners of 120 and 130 might find the application slow to load. I know and understand your pain. I've tried to tweak the application loading operations as much as I could, and it's pretty much the best I can do at this time. The problem here is the use of the NewtApp framework that I used as the basis of NewtGrocery, coupled with the special manipulation I do of the entries. Everytime you launch NewtGrocery, the sort and show settings are always restored to those in effect the last time you set them. That's one of the factor. Then, there is the cumulative total that needs to compute the price of all the items in the current folder, not only those that are visible. Finally, the overview, and also the detail view, have a fair amount of information to display, which take some time. So, to those that feels the pain harder than the others, don't forget that there is a little option in the "i" popup called "Hide NewtGrocery". Like the title says, this will hide NewtGrocery, but will keep it loaded. You will have the blinking star at the top of the screen to switch to NewtGrocery again. While in this sleep mode, NewtGrocery doesn't use much memory, so keeping it open shouldn't be a problem.
©2000 Nemesys
Software. All rights reserved.