New to iOS developing here. Basically I am creating a soundboard app. I have the app essentially working (aka buttons returning sounds).
However my app only looks proper on the iPhone 6. I just have one ViewController in my main storyboard. When I run the simulator for the 4S/5/6+ or iPads, my buttons are pretty much everywhere.
I tried playing with size classes/autolayout through Apple's documentation, but couldn't get it working properly. What's the best (easiest ;) ) route I can follow to have it basically looking the same on ALL devices?
PS: I have one background placed too, I don't mind if it looks different on all devices since it's pretty minimalistic, but if someone can shed some light here too, that would be great.
Thanks!
You have a few options:
1) Continue your plan spending time getting friendly with Auto Layout and Size Classes. This might be difficult at first, but it will really pay off later. You should use the Assistant Editor's Preview mode to let you see iPhone 4, 5 and 6 side-by-side as you work so you can make sure your layouts look great everywhere.
2) Use a component like UIStackView where layouts are automatically adjusted to fit various devices. If your soundboard is as simple as a grid of buttons, you can do that in just a few minutes using a stack view.
3) Use a component like UITableView or UICollectionView where content is designed to scroll. Using this method you design only one sound button of your app (i.e., enough to play one sound) then have iOS replicate that across all the sounds you want. When your interface is presented on a device of a different size iOS will just make the content scroll.
Very roughly, option 1 makes you do all the work; option 2 makes your layout shrink down until it fits the available space; and option 3 makes your layout stay the same size no matter what, but you should expect it to scroll on some devices.
There is no right solution; it's entirely down how you want your app to work.
Related
I am fairly new to developing for iOS. I have a fully functioning program written in Swift and the UI was created in the scene builder on Xcode. I created an app for my work to simplify closing out the registers and other financial aspects. The app is complete and works perfectly, but was designed on the iPhoneX. The problem is that only a few of the employees have an iPhoneX, but they all have some kind of iPhone. I have tried setting up constraints but it never works. Ive tried scaling restraints and position restraints but I can't get the layout to look right on any other phone, and when I add the constraints it affects the view on the iPhoneX as well and doesn't look good on any iPhone. I need help getting this to work on all iPhones. I would like it to look and act the exact same regardless of the size of the phone, basically just scaled down. There are a lot of things on the screen and I can't figure out how to do this. Please help!!!
I have been working on this for a long time and I really need help. Please let me know if I need to clarify anything. I have posted links to some pictures of my UI so you have an idea of whats going on.
Constraints I tried adding, although I have played around with some other options.
Here's what it looks like on the iPhoneX, this is how I want it to look.
What it looks like on iPhoneSE (with constraints).
One thing I noticed in your Xcode project that none of your features are in UIView. Without it, it will be quite challenging and somewhat always different results. In theory, if you use AutoLayout features correctly it should work without UIView, but they make life so much easier. This is something I learned the hard way at the beginning of my iOS development. First set up your UIViews without any content inside it, give them some background colour to differentiate, once they are working on all devices. You can pin your features to superviews with no difficulty.
Since you have a repetitive features, you could also consider using Stack Views. You don't have complicated features, so as long as AutoLayout is set up correctly you should have no problems seeing it ok on all devices
I've been struggling with this issue for a while and hours of research and experimentation didn't produce any acceptable results.
I have a login screen that contains a lot of UI elements. The view looks great on iphone 7 and 6 variations but when I test it on SE or 4S the constraints fail to position the elements so they fit nicely on their tiny screen. Simply there is not enough room. I read that I must support all screen sizes but at this point I am not sure how can I get all the ui elements to fit in the smaller screens.
I watched hours of youtube videos and tried all possible ways including a vertical stack view but no matter what I try, it either looks good on 7 and 6 but terrible on SE/4S or vice versa (good on SE/4S but way too much white space on 7/6).
At this point I am not sure what else I can do. I know it is not possible to design a UI just for a specific screen size and vary for traits is not what I need because I only intend to support vertical orientation.
Any help or suggestion will be greatly appreciated.
As you have said in your own comment, you can restrict the device sizes indirectly by restricting the iOS version. However that is not a good solution: If you are creating the app for commercial reasons that will unnecessarily restrict your market (there are a lot of 4S users out there); If you are learning app development, now is a good time to work out how to manage GUI layout problems properly (there will always be a wide range of display sizes to cope with).
There are several tools available to assist:
Auto Layout
As others have said in comments, Auto Layout can help a lot. Don't just use it to position things though, but also to resize them to make best use of the available space.
Understanding Auto Layout (Apple)
Size Classes
Size Classes allow you to use different constraints and turn on or off controls depending on the general size and orientation of your user's device. For example, where space is restricted you could hide individual controls and instead display a single control to take the user to them elsewhere (another view or a popover for example).
Size-Class-Specific Layout (Apple)
Scroll Views
You can make part or all of your GUI a scroll view that on larger devices will show all the controls whilst on smaller devices initially show just the top ones but still give your users access to the others (don't forget to flash the scroll bars when the view first appears to show them that there is more to see though).
Separate Storyboards
Although you have not mentioned iPad support, you can also specify completely separate storyboards to help layout universal apps.
See this SO answer and it's linked reference for details.
I have been trying to figure out how to get my app to look good on all apple devices. I will say I made this app very quickly and was not thinking about how it would look on different devices when I was making it. I was just having a good time making it. Until now, since it only looks good on the iPhone 6s, which is what I was testing it on the whole time. This is the basic layout of my app:
Is there any way to format this without starting completely over or is it just too much of a mess to fix?
Thanks,
Austin
Use Autolayout. That is what it's for. You don't have to start over; you just need to add proper constraints to all your elements so that they do the right sort of thing when the app launches on a larger or smaller screen.
I'm taking a few first steps in Xamarin for iOS and having a very hard time figuring out how to create a view that is resolution independent.
I have a single textbox in the view, aligned so that its edges meet the edge of a iPhone 6S. When I change the View to a Iphone 4S the edges of the textbox are outside of the view.
I have tried to drag the constrains to the edges, pretty much clicked every button and tried to find some example of how to make it so the view resizes to fit the viewport but I cannot make it work. Ive also fiddled with the different modes of the View (Aspect Fit, Scale to Fill, etc) but that makes no difference.
I would love to se a simple example of how to create a resolution independent or multi-resolution form or view that is displayed similarily no matter the screen resolution on the iPhone.
Having gone through very much the same pain as you, my recommendation is two-fold:
Have a look at the Cirrious FluentLayouts package, which you can
get from NuGet.
A tremendous help in simplifying various issues with auto-layout, especially if you decide (like I did) to just give up on the GUI layout tools and go with a full programmatic approach.
It will allow constructs like:
this.AddConstraints
(
_navBar.AtTopOf(this, UIApplication.SharedApplication.StatusBarFrame.Height),
_navBar.AtLeftOf(this),
_navBar.WithSameWidth(this),
_navBar.Height().EqualTo(Hamburger.HamburgerHeight),
_scrollView.Below(_navBar),
_scrollView.AtLeftOf(this),
_scrollView.WithSameWidth(this),
_scrollView.Bottom().EqualTo().TopOf(_pageControl),
_pageControl.Above(_toolBar),
_pageControl.AtLeftOf(this),
_pageControl.WithSameWidth(this),
_pageControl.Height().EqualTo(pageControlHeight),
_toolBar.Above(_button),
_toolBar.AtLeftOf(this),
_toolBar.WithSameWidth(this),
_toolBar.Height().EqualTo(toolHeight),
_button.AtRightOf(this),
_button.AtBottomOf(this),
_button.Height().EqualTo(buttonHeight)
);
Be aware that since... iOS 8 I believe? ... you now need to use a
LaunchScreen.xib to have your app correctly pick up device
resolution which will then be used by auto-layout.
This was the one area I still needed to use the graphical layout tool for - just once, happy to say.
I wrote game code and played, using iPhone 6 Plus simulator, and it is working fine, but once I switch to other devices, UI is messed up... I do not want to do this from scratch. Is there any way to fix this problem by, for example, adding some code...? I thought about adding UIScreen but I do not know how to do that. If you could give me some advice, it is very helpful.
The standard approach to implementing user interfaces for multiple screen dimensions is to use auto layout. You should read Apple's guide to auto layout.