I have created a tab bar controller and I noticed that when I change tabs its an abrupt change-scene. Is there a way to make it so that when a tab is changed it slides to that tab?
I don't think, that this is possible with a UITabBarController. If you want an animated change between the content, you will need to implement another structure. You could for example use a collectionview, where the cells hold your content-controllers views, and where you change to the other view per button-tap-action and call collectionView.scrollToItemAtIndexPath()
Related
I'm trying to create a tabbed application with navigation elements inside the tab bar, as seen in the picture below (the red bar) using Swift/XCode 6.2. Basically those three icons in the middle will direct the user to different view controllers. The other two icons would be context-based. For example, on a table view page you would see the menu icon and add new icon as seen in the image. However, clicking on a row would change the menu icon to a back icon, and the add icon to something else.
That's the general idea, but I'm having a very hard time implementing something even close to this. The first issue is that whenever I embed a view in a Tab Bar Controller, I can't move the tab bar to the top. However, when I create a custom UITabView in a View Controller, Control + Click and dragging a Tab Bar Item to another view doesn't create a segue. I haven't even begun to tackle having the navigation elements inside the bar.
I guess what I'm asking is just for a little guidance on what route to take to tackle this. I'm assuming I can't use a Tab Bar Controller or Navigation Controller because it doesn't seem like I can customize them all that much. So custom Tab Bar and Navigation Bars, and then implemnt the segues and button changes programmatically?
Thanks.
I will try to guide you from an architectural perspective (so you won't find much code below).
Using a UITabBarController
In order to achieve what you are suggesting, you are right you cannot use a UITabBarController straight away, among several reasons, the most immediate one is that they are meant to be always at the bottom and you want it in top (check Apple's docs). The good news is that probably you don't need it!
Note: If you still want to go with a UITabBarController for whatever reason, please see #Matt's answer.
Using a UINavigationController
You can use a UINavigationController to solve this task, since the UINavigationBar of a UINavigationController can be customized. There are multiple ways on how you can organize your view's hierarchy to achieve what you propose, but let me elaborate one option:
To customize a UINavigationBar's to add buttons, you just need to set its navigationItem's title view:
// Assuming viewWithTopButtons is a view containing the 3 top buttons
self.navigationItem.titleView = viewWithTopButtons
To add the burger menu functionality on a UINavigationController you can find several posts on how to do it and infinite frameworks you can use. Check this other SO Question for a more detailed answer (e.g. MMDrawerController, ECSlidingViewController to mention a couple).
About organizing your view hierarchy, it really depends on if when the user taps one of the main top buttons, it will always go to the first view controller in the new section or if you want to bring him back to the last view in the section where he was.
3.1 Switching sections displays the first view of the new section
Your app's UIWindow will have a single UINavigationController on top of the hierarchy. Then each of the 3 top buttons, when tapped, will change the root view controller of the UINavigationController.
Then, when the user changes section, the current navigation hierarchy is discarded by setting the new section view controller as the UINavigationController root view controller.
self.navigationController = [sectionFirstViewController]
3.2 Switching sections displays the last displayed view in the new section
This will require a slightly modified version of the above, where your each of your sections will have its own UINavigationController, so you can always keep a navigation hierarchy per section.
Then, when the user taps one of the top buttons to switch section, instead of changing as previously described, you will change the UIWindowroot view controller to the new section's UINavigationController.
window.rootViewController = sectionNavigationController
Using a custom implementation
Of course, the last and also very valid option would be that you implement yourself your own component to achieve your requirements. This is probably the option requiring the biggest effort in exchange of the highest customizability.
Choosing this option is definitely not recommend to less experienced developers.
I'd like to take a stab at this--I think it is possible to use a tab bar controller here.
Your topmost-level view controller will be a UITabBarController with a hidden UITabBar.
Each tab is contained in a UINavigationController.
All view controllers in the navigation controller will be a subclass of a view controller (say, SwitchableViewController).
In SwitchableViewController's viewDidLoad, you set the navigation item's title view (i.e. whatever's at the center; self.navigationItem.titleView) to be the view that holds the three center buttons. Could be a UISegmentedControl, or a custom view.
Whenever you tap on any of the buttons, you change the topmost UITabBarController's selected index to the view controller you want to show.
Issues you may encounter:
Table views inside tabs will have a scrollIndicatorOffset at the bottom even if the tab bar is hidden.
Solution: Play around with the automaticallyAdjustsScrollViewInsets of the tab bar controller, or the inner view controller. https://stackoverflow.com/a/29264073/855680
Your title view will be animated every time you push a new view controller in the navigation stack.
Solution: Take a look at creating a custom transition animation for the UINavigationController.
I have the task to design a application that has a main view which is always visible (it has a button on it's bottom side, and when pressed a image displays on top of all views), and a set of TableControllerView's that should appear under it, and the user needs to be able to navigate through them.
I know that you can embed a view inside another, but you cannot refer more than one view to it. The current way I'm trying to do now load one TableViewController inside the embed view, and when the user clicks the cell I manually load the other controller and add it as a child of the main view, which is the RootViewController. The problem with this approach is that the navigation bar gets stuck using the root view controller, so I have to manipulate the main navigation items on each subview transition, and second is that the frame for the second view I load is coming as it had full size, making some cells be under the main view button. This way doesn't uses segues for transition, so it makes the storyboard kinda useless.
I was thinking into using a TabViewController with it's tab hidden, but wanted to ask here for a better solution.
As you discovered, a TableViewController likes to fill up the whole screen (except navigation bars, tab bars, status bar, etc. which are official Cocoa Touch GUIs). When you want a table view to fill only part of the screen, you are supposed to use a UITableView but not a UITableViewController. You set your custom view controller object (subclass of UIViewController, not UITableViewController) as the table view delegate and data source. You will need to duplicate part of the functionality of UITableViewController in your custom view controller, but it's not a lot more than you have to do already to supply the data.
You should probably follow the standard design pattern and have separate view controller objects for each of the "pages" the user can navigate to. You just have a main button and image on each of them. But I could imagine why that might not give you exactly the effect you want.
I've set up a storyboard with a UITabBarController object and I'd like to add two tabs to that, but both tabs are going to be exactly the same except for the data they will display. Obviously, I could drag in two new view controllers and connect them up and just maintain the views separately, but I don't want to do this at all.
Does anyone know the most efficient way of doing this?
I've done this by using a regular UIViewController with a tab bar at the bottom, rather than using a UITabBarController. You just have to use the UITabBar delegate method, tabBar:didSelectItem:, to detect the tab clicks, and then do whatever you need to do to switch what data is displayed in the single view.
I'd like to use a slide up / down effect to display various viewControllers inside a navigation controller. A few other apps do this like square, and every day. Basically when the app loads, I want to display a base view in the navigation controller. Then slide up another view controller over top of it. When then hit a button in the nav bar, I want to slide that down and show the base controller, all the while retaining the navigation bar, and changing up nav items.
Originally I tried to make this work by showing a modal but that requires using a new nav bar.
Has anyone done this, or knows of a good example that illustrates this UI pattern? Thank you!
You could have UIViews in a UIScrollView
I have a nice iPhone app built that uses a UINavigationController to navigate through a series of tableviews. I now want to add a persistent banner at the top of all of my views, either above the navigation bar or just below it. I do not want it to scroll with the tableview, so I do not want to make it a custom first row.
Any ideas on the best way to approach this?
What I did to achieve this was to make a new UIView for each of the views that I needed the banner on, and placed the banner in there, and the table or other view below the banner. This doesn't keep the banner there persistently through the transitions which is what I really wanted, but I was able to get a non-scrolling header above my tables.
EDIT:
The "correct" way to do this now would be to have a root view controller that consists of your header, and a container view, and then all of the navigation and content goes inside your container view. Although this does require ios6+
You could customize your navigation bar so that it displays the "classical" bar and then, above or below it, it draws your specific content. See this post for more detail.