I'm working on an app that supports dynamic type. I have a simple UIView that is used as the footer in a table. Within that view is just a UIButton. When the user increases the dynamic type size, the text in the button's label grows, and I need the button itself, and the containing view to both grow appropriately. How can I achieve this?
Thanks,
The UIButton class has an intrinsic size, meaning that if you don't constrain it to a specific size it will size itself to a size that will fit its content. This also means that you can tie your button to the edges of a parent UIView and let the button control the size of the parent. This will happen automatically as long as you don't explicitly constrain the size of the UIButton or UIView.
If you want to, you can choose to set a constraint on one axis and have the button control the size of the other, for example let the button control the height of your footer, but always use a fixed width for the footer. In this case you add constraints to the width or left/right of your footer.
Read more on controls that supports intrinsic sizes
If you need space around the button label you can add it by increasing the content insets.
Related
I have a ViewController which contains a ScrollView and I'm trying to make a form menu so I need multiple labels and text fields.
I've been using the designer to do that.
The ScrollView will allow the user to scroll vertically, I already have many elements in the View but I need to add more.
The problem is that the size of the parent ViewController have a fixed size in the designer and because of that I reached the situation where I need to add elements under a label but there is just no space in the designer where I can put it.
hmmm.. not sure how this will carry over to tamarin/visual-studio, but in Xcode Interface Builder you can set the View Controller Simulated Size to "Freeform" --- and then set it as tall as you wish. Well, it may have a limit, but I just tested it and made it as tall as 5,000 pts. After laying everything out, you can set it back to "normal" size. At runtime, it will size itself however you've set the constraints.
Other alternatives...
Design your elements in "containing" views, and then add them in either dynamically via code or by manually setting the positions in the designer.
Use a single, tall "containing" view in your Scroll View. Make that view, say, 1500 its tall. In the designer, add the first few elements, then set the Y position of that view to a negative number. If your Scroll View is 500 its tall, set the Y position of the containing view to -400. The view will "slide up" in the Scroll View, and you can continue adding elements.
Edit: I found the correct solution and will include it at the bottom of the question
I have a textfield. I constrain the textfield to nearest neighbour, which is in this case the view and when i do this, height for the textfield goes out of my control and matches the size of the text exactly. How can I constrain the text box to nearest neighbour without the text box automatically resizing. Below is an image that shows my constraints and the orange outline of what the textfield wishes to resize to. It also shows that the view will shrink to an expected height of 62 aka the size of the text box.
I would add, that when i checked the constraints in inspector, i found that the text box was not always set to first items. when I made the text box the first item in all constraints the width became editable.
Answer:
1) The secret to adding constraints to a text box it to put content hugging as a low priority eg. 250. Look at the above picture and you can see content hugging vertically is at 750 or high priority while content hugging horizontally is at low priority(=250). Therefore i am able to constrain to nearest neighbor for the width which is at low priority but not for the height which is at high priority.
For more info check this documentation
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AutolayoutPG/WorkingwithConstraintsinInterfaceBuidler.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40010853-CH10-SW2
2) each constraint has a first and second item in the inspector. The second item gets its attributes(eg. size) from the first. double click on the contraints in the size inspector as pictured above to inspect the constraint more closely
The layout engine does not know what size you want the parent view (your view controller in this case), so it takes the intrinsic content size of the textfield.
Do you want the textfield to be exactly as big as it needs to be? Then don't touch it, your textfield will resize to contain the text, using your constraints to place itself.
Do you want your view controller to have a certain size? (e.g. if you want a specific background image to fit) Then you might want to consider adding constraints to your parent view so that it keeps a certain size or aspect ratio.
I will suggest to remove existing constraints, and add vertically and horizontally center constraints.
Here are two labels stacked directly on top of each other, with their backgrounds colored:
I always design my apps in Photoshop first. That dead space on the top and bottom of the labels makes it extremely difficult to position text precisely as in the design. How can I compensate for that top and bottom space when I want to place the label by top or bottom of the text?
Try calling -sizeToFit on the label in order to resize it.
Call this method when you want to resize the current view so that it
uses the most appropriate amount of space. Specific UIKit views resize
themselves according to their own internal needs. In some cases, if a
view does not have a superview, it may size itself to the screen
bounds. Thus, if you want a given view to size itself to its parent
view, you should add it to the parent view before calling this method.
Either use AutoLayout to size your labels exactly at the content size, or use sizeToFit in code and position your labels accordingly.
Can you not create a background UIView with the background colour, and then add the label as a subview of the background view?
I have 2 tappable labels grouped within a parent view (The attached screenshot shows 3 of these views). Currently the size of each label is set to fit its content. Therefore a tap gesture is only recognized when the tap is directly on the text. I want to be able to tap above or below the text (but within its parent view) so that a tapped label is triggered. What type of constraints would I need to add between the views so that I’m able to do this?
You could add minimum widths and heights to the labels, and that might do what you want (width >= minimum). Alternatively, you could add these labels as the child of a larger UIView that does the gesture recognition. You should add constraints to that UIView so that it expands as the UILabels expand, and again, you'd still need minimum widths and heights.
You would add a height constraint to each label. This is not normally needed, because a label has an intrinsic content size (intrinsicContentSize) that is used to generate its height automatically, through two low-priority constraints that cause the label to resist getting larger than or smaller than the intrinsic height. But if you simply add a height constraint, you can make the label taller, overriding the intrinsic content size; this works because your constraint has a higher priority than the intrinsic height constraints.
I'm writing a calculator app with a shift key. When the shift key is pressed, some of the UIButtons' labels should change. The problem is that when they do, the widths also change and, because of certain design constraints, other buttons will resize themselves too. How to I lock the width of a button (either pragmatically or in the storyboard builder) so that it will never change (regardless of the contents of the button)
Thanks for any help in advance.
Buttons, like labels have an intrinsic size that's set by the width of their text plus some padding. If you want them to have a fixed width, then in IB, just give each button an explicit width from the menu, Editor --> Pin --> Width.
Have you tried using [button sizeToFit]? Call it after you resize the subviews within and then you will likely want to apply some "padding" as this will size the view to exactly fit it's subviews.
UIView sizeToFit