iOS / Xcode: Group overlapping elements in Stack View - ios

For my game, I want to have this element for movement:
It's actually one image with 4 buttons on it:
Now how do I go about making them adaptive as in a stack view?
Since stack view doesn't really allow me to make elements overlap, I don't see an easy way here. Or I could make different stack views and make these overlap, but would that really be a good approach?
Is there another way to group elements in iOS, which allows more than horizontal and vertical stacking?

Apple suggests to use UIStackView rather than NSLayoutConstraints for designing the view but, it is not necessary to use UIStackView always.
According to mentioned situation in question, it is better if you use constraints rather than UIStackView here.
But you wish to stack here, then take the 2 images in stack at a time and then align them in center of container view.

Related

swift 4 and Xcode autoLayout and UIImageview as Button

I am working on auto layout and making those UIIMages as Button.
I would like to make those button to be clicked and switch the images
as well as showing some words in the label.
In this case what should I do?
In addition, as it is shown, the auto layout ratio is different only from the iPhone SE. In. this case What should I consider?
Many thanks,
The first thing you need to learn is auto layout. Start with basic Always go with Apple's doc first
This one I likes he is good and you will also find how to use buttons as image view, using card game example, check other tutorials also very helpfull.
Stanford university autolayout by Michel Deiman
As far, your question just gives your label Horizontal in the container constraints(open storyboard in the right bottom third from last (allin) click on it popUp will open), and 20 bottom to the buttons and it will be in the centre. Every elements need x,y height and width so it knows exactly where to place, so you also need to give constraints to the buttons, Learn stackView to understand how to place your button without giving many constraints to each button and stack view will handle it for you, try hide and show to one of the button and magically stack view will adjust all adjustment. I suggest before staring Do read apple's doc first.
And Your question is too broad to answer, so read and try adding different constraints based on your need and ask a specific question(after trying by yourself) like why this label getting cut what constraints should i add so people know exactly what you want to achieve, people are always ready to help, just ask the right question.
happyCoding

Swift stack view in storyBoard

Im having an issue with my layout in my story board. When i make a stack view how can i adjust the size of the UIlabel box to fit more text?
Image Example:
Also how can i get rid of the stack view to bring everything back to its original state?
To add more text- simply type more text. The label adjusts itself.
To get rid of the stack view- select the stack view and go to Editor->Unembed
I have given you a brief overview of auto layout. The examples that we have worked on were pretty easy. However, as your app UI becomes more complex, you will find it more difficult to define the layout constraints for all UI objects. Starting from iOS 9, Apple introduced a powerful feature called Stack Views that would make our developers' life a little bit simpler. You no longer need to define auto layout constraints for every UI objects. Stack views will take care of most of that.
In this chapter, we will continue to focus on discussing UI design with Interface Builder. I will teach you how to build a more comprehensive UI, which you may come across in a real-world application. You will learn how to:
Use stack views to lay out user interfaces.
Use image views to display images.
Manage images using the built-in asset catalog.
Adapt stack views using Size Classes.
On top of the above, we will explore more about auto layout. You'll be amazed how much you can get done without writing a line of code.
What is a Stack View
First things first, what is a stack view? The stack view provides a streamlined interface for laying out a collection of views in either a column or a row. In Keynote or Microsoft Powerpoint, you can group multiple objects together so that they can be moved or resized as a single object. Stack views offer a very similar feature. You can embed multiple UI objects into one by using stack views. In most cases, for views embedded in a stack view, you no longer need to define auto layout constraints.
Quick note: For views embedded in a stack view, they are usually known as arranged views.
The stack view manages the layout of its subviews and automatically applies layout constrants for you. That means, the subviews are ready to adapt to different screen sizes. Furthermore, you can embed a stack view in another stack view to build more complex user interfaces. Sounds cool, right?
Don’t get me wrong. It doesn’t mean you do not need to deal with auto layout. You still need to define the layout constrants for the stack views. It just saves you time from creating constraints for every UI element and makes it super easy to add/remove views from the layout.

Xcode: Stack View Move to next line if screen is too small

Using Stack View, I want to get 3 items next to each other, which I achieved:
However, what I am looking to do is if the screen is too small to fit everything nicely in, then to move the block to the next line such as:
Should I not be using Stack View for this?
Github version of sample project:
https://github.com/jzhang172/StackTest
UIStackViews cannot do that kind of automatic layout where it sends overflow to a new row AFAIK. For what you are trying to do there are several other options depending on your purpose.
Embed several stackviews in a large UIScrollView and size it to only show your first row. Later could "grow" that scrollview to expose additional stackviews as needed.
You could dynamically create additional UIStackViews located in the lower position and fill them as needed.
You could consider a UICollectionView instead.
BTW: There is a github project for OS X embedding stack views in a scrollview dynamically. It might help you out: StackViewTest

Best approach to showing or hiding dynamic content in iOS

I've been doing iOS for a while now, but when it comes to dynamically hiding / showing elements, I'm a bit lost.
Coming from Android, I'm used to being able to simply set views to visibility gone, but this doesn't exist on iOS.
So let's say I have the following scenario:
Basically I want to have a table, but the table should not fill the entire view controller. Instead it should leave place for optionally either a button, a multiline label, or possibly both at the bottom (if visible, these should be fixed, not scroll).
One way to solve this would be to use auto layout and modify constraints, like adding a zero height constraint. But that would make iOS kill one of the other constraints, which would make it hard to change it again. For the label, I wouldn't always want to have a height constraint, because it could be multiline, and should take the size it needs.
Maybe it's easier to skip autolayout here and modify frames instead, I don't know.
My question is: What approach would be best here?
Is there some other way of doing this I haven't thought of, or do I have to try to do what I described above?
I'm not primarily looking for code (code can be ok), but I'm more interested in a description of how it can be done.
I'd like to support iOS 7.
This problem had a variety of solutions, and opinion based, but I'm facing such questions a lot, when I don't know what to choose and what would be the "right thing".
So, I my opinion, the best solution here is using autolayout, you need to set height of label manually, but you have a few methods for this, at least you can play with it and if you don't succeed ask question about it. Using frames, you'll face same problem of calculating height, right? But with auto layout, you only need to set height, vertical space to 0, when you need to hide message.
You can also use constrains with priority lower 1000, and remove completely constraints from message (button, label) if you don't need it at all anymore.
For example, taking your layout image, you can make UIView with subviews: button, label. Top constraint connect to the UITableView, other constraints to the sides.Label and button will calculate the view's height. The only question here is label height.
So in ios assuming that the background of both these objects is opaque only the front most view in the Heirarchy will be visible and interactable, An easy solution would be to change the different frames of these two things you need and make sure they are in the back of your view heirachy, and when you need them to appear use view.bringSubviewToFront(mySubview) and view.pushSubviewToBack(mySubview) to make it disappear again. View obviously would be referring to main view of your view controller.

What's the technique to do expand/compact stack on iPad like Reeder and Photos?

On iPad, both the native Photos app as well as Reeder use a "expand/collapse stack" technique. Initially there is a stack of items on top of one another, each angled a bit with different corners showing. When you interact with them, the stack expands into a full screen and the items are laid out in a grid. When you collapse them, they collapse back into a stack.
What's the best way to set up my views to do the same thing? Should I just have a bunch of UIviews (one for each item) and manipulate their coordinates/transforms with an animation, or is there something more to it? Any example apps with code?
(Note: I am not asking about the interaction to invoke expand/collapse, I'm only asking what's the most appropriate way to lay out and set up my items.)
These days, use UICollectionView with different layouts and transitioning between layouts.

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