When I first developed the Android version of SuDokuSolver, it was derived from a Windows-based, mouse driven version which had been running for some years. The first thing I noticed when I started to use the Android version "for real" was that the screen was the wrong way round. As it was touch-based, touching the buttons on the left hand side with my right hand obscured the working areas in the centre and right, and that what I needed to do was reverse the order of these three principal screen areas.
However, instead of doing just that, I reasoned that I already had a version that was suited to left-handed people, and it seemed a shame to throw that away. So I introduced some alternative screen layouts for right-handed users, and a menu-driven facility to switch from one to the other.
I recently managed to break my right wrist and elbow rather badly, and for the last few weeks I've been in plaster from the hand to above the elbow. I've used the enforced idle time that this has generated (I should have been sailing for six weeks by now) to work my way through the pile of Sudoku and Killer Sudoku puzzles I had waiting to be processed by Sudoku Solver. Using the Left-handed facility, of course! It's worked a treat. I've also taken the opportunity to make some changes to the layout XML files to bring them more in line with the latest Android standards. I'll make a new release of both Sudoku Solver and SuDoku Lite when the plaster is off my elbow and I can type normally again; at present I'm restricted to using just one finger on my right hand.
However, though the left-handed facility worked just fine, I did notice one issue: my ComboBox widget had the drop-down button on the right-hand, so the text in the ComboBox was obscured by my left hand when using that button. So after digging around in StackOverflow and other useful Android support sites, I've found a way to implement a layout parameter that enables me to specify whether the dropdown button should go on the left or the right. This is now working, and by introducing left-hand variants of the Select Game and Save Game functions I can use this left-handed ComboBox in those variants. This will be in the next releases of SuDoku Solver and SuDoku Lite. I'll share that ComboBox code via this website, again when my elbow is better.
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