I have a question for you guys (only relevant to android users, but if you're an iOS user please answer also):
Which would you prefer, in a seperate tab for searching the database, after you click the search button, would you rather the search results come up and fill up the full real estate of the screen or stay within the tab frame.
An example of what I'm referring to would be looking at the current app that's available on the Marketplace. When you do a search, you see the full window, there are no other UI elements or Tabs. If you use the official Twitter app, it does it this way when you click on a tweet or an object in a tab. It will load the next activity as it's own view on top of the Tab view. Now, look at this video I posted the other day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ezpHME3U-wAs you can see, the entire search process is confined to the tab content frame below the tab bar but it's a loss of view space. I hope that illustrates what I'm asking. I think most apps use the other method where you would click a tab and then any other functions after that will load a new activity (page/window/frame what ever you want to call it) because it's easier to code. Which is one of the reasons why I'm asking. I'm not quite sure how iOS would handle this normally so I can't comment. I haven't looked into Tabs yet on that platform.
Anyway, I wouldn't mind some feedback on this. Both methods, while rather similar require two completely different mindsets in design and layout (well, one is easier to implement than the other but after the hard one is done, the easier one can still be done easily) so I want to figure this one out before I get too far into this current build.