In short I am trying to build some typical browser functionalities in a Swift iOS app with WKWebViews (WebKit). I already have a functioning browser based on a WKWebView, which already has a menu bar with a URL input, navigation buttons, a share button, page title etc.
What I am struggling with is creating tabs for the browser. At first this seemed trivial as surely WKWebViews would support this in some way. Well, as far as I can tell they do not (looked at and tried multiple tutorials incl. hackingwithswift, Ray Wenderlich etc. + I checked Apple's documentation + stackoverflow)
This is what I have come up with so far:
1) Creating a new tab/opening a new URL should create a new UIView + WKWebView programmatically (I'll have to make a subclass out of my current browser view)
=> this should create a separate thread for each WKWebView/tab according to Apple's documentation
2) I need something like a Collection View (or Stack Views etc.) to store screenshot images of the already open tabs as a preview page of all tabs. The cells should be linked via a delegate to the corresponding WkWebView and they should have a close button to close (= delete) the tabs.
Am I overthinking this? If I go down this path I have to find a way to wire up (and subsequently delete) multiple delegates and views to the Collection View dynamically and I have to store & delete screenshots every time the user interacts with the tabs. It seems VERY messy. But given that Chrome on iOS is based on WebKit as of late, it's obviously doable.
How would you tackle this problem?
PS I didn't include a mockup because you all know how the tabs in Chrome, Safari etc. on iOS look like.
EDIT:
I am just looking for a clean and sensible way to add/remove and show the multiple WKWebViews, which are created by opening new tabs - just like in Chrome for iOS or Safari etc.
Ok, I have solved this today :) I will have a main UIView and then multiple WKWebViews, which can be "zoomed in" in order to enter full screen mode. No need for screenshots etc.
Related
I have a screen with 1 button. When clicking that button, a list of items should be shown (in which the user can select multiple items).
On android, i would like to do this using a dialog. I create a "DialogService" that does this, no problem.
On iOS, however, it seems that the best practice is to display a fullscreen tableview, for example as a modalView. Is it possible to do this without using a custom viewpresenter (e.g. modalViewPresenter)? I would very much prefer to have identical navigation on both platforms and just have different implementations of "DialogService"
I think trying to make one platform look and act like another is generally not a great idea as things start to look weird for the users.
But if you want to do it anyway I would start by trying to do something like this https://stackoverflow.com/a/29910246/1107580 (it is in objective-c) then trying to bind to the tableview that is in the alertcontroller.
I'm starting a new iOS project in Swift, and my experience programming native iOS applications is minimal, so please bear with me if I use some whacky terminology or overlook some simple solutions.
I'm looking to replicate a pattern in the Instagram application, as seen here:
Selected Tab
Swiping Transition
For those who don't use Instagram, what's essentially going on here is something like a UIPageViewController (with swiping functionality), but with the tabs on top indicating the selected page.
Like in Instagram, I'm planning to have this functionality within a child UIViewController of a UITabBarController (you can see the "main" tabs on the bottom).
What I started out doing was creating static tabs and adding left and right gesture recognizers to the child UIViewController, which would change the page and update the indicator of the selected page on the tabs.
This works but I'm not really loving the way it looks, nor the way it's written. I don't like the idea of needing 2 instances of the tabs, and that certainly doesn't seem to be the way Instagram is doing it, because as shown in the second image, the indicator slides between the tabs.
I've searched a fair bit, but all references to replicating Instagram patterns seem to be outdated and don't address this specific element. Like I said, though, I haven't been programming native iOS for very long (I'm an Android developer and have used Xamarin for iOS), so it's possible I'm just not using the right keywords.
I'd appreciate any help y'all can offer!
Thanks
I am finishing an iPhone app for my company.
I am using Xcode and Xpages, as we are a Lotus Notes shop.
In Xcode I am using a UINavigation Controller with a Table View for selections. One selection is the Company Directory, which is an Xpage using the Xpages Mobile Controls (Single Page Application and then Application pages, etc.). This works fine EXCEPT for the navigation hand off between the Xcode parts of the app and Xpages. I end up with two sets of navigation controls, which is not good.
Any ideas how I can get around this?
Bryan
OK, I think I figured this out.
It really isn't anything to do with Xpages, but with using UIWebViews within iOS.
The problem was that on the first webView, I wanted to show the iOS Navigation, but in any subsequent ones I didn't want to - would just prefer to use the web navigation.
There is a delegation method in iOS Web views that allows you to show or hide the navigation bar. I added this delegate and just check to see which page I am on. If on the first one, I show the iOS Navigation, else I suppress.
This works great!
I am working on an app in which there are several screens and each screen has the same layout, just different data passed in, then I want the user to be able to swipe from one screen to the next.
So far I got something working using the UIPageViewController project template using the transition style UIPageViewControllerTransitionStyleScroll. What I have done so far works ok, although its resource intensive because it instantiates a new view controller each time I swipe to a new page but I am loooking into working around that.
The thing I am concerned about is that it is not strictly a page application in the sense of ibooks so even though I am able to make it look like a scrolling app, using the transition style setting, I wonder if there is a reason why people seem to only use this template for book type apps, unless I am mistaken
Also there seems to be an alternative approach of using a UIScrollView and PageControl to do similar functionality
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#samplecode/PageControl/Introduction/Intro.html
I am not sure which approach is better to solve the problem I am trying to fix, so am looking for some feedback. Each page will need to be a separate instance of a view controller as there are several elements to display on each page.
Using UIScrollView is much more difficult. If you're targeting iOS 6 you should almost certainly use UIPageViewController. If you're targeting iOS 5 then UIPageViewController might not be perfect because the only page transition available is "scroll" which looks like a page flip.
If you're worried about the resource usage, you can reuse view controllers.
See the WWDC 2012 session 223:
https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2012/223/
I can not use UIWebView because I want the text to be accessible even if the user does not have Internet access on their phone. Also, I will need to have buttons to other screens on the app and I think that is not possible with UIWebView (right?)
Is there a way for me to edit the xml of the screen directly inside Xcode? My requirement is to have about 10 sections with header labels and buttons before each, so if I have to adjust it on the storyboard screen, it will be a bit nightmarish.
What is a reasonable approach for me here? I think only to edit the xml by hand and hardcode it with styles and text, right?
several things here:
webviews only need an internet connection if you are downloading the content for the view (which doesnt seem like what you want anyway, aren't you just building it locally?)
you can make the buttons in a webview do whatever you want. See this answer.
What is so complex about this UI that you can't just build it the regular way in code or IB?
Just because you consider using a UIWebView it doesn't mean you are restricting your application functionality to internet access.
You can just as well have HTML documents in the application bundle that you display in a webview. This is basically what PhoneGap is doing.
If you don't want to use webviews then nothing is stopping you from using UIViews, UILabels, UIImageViews etc and compose your app how you want.