I am trying to recreate the calculator app layout in my app. My problem is that I can't get auto layout to work right. So I have a label at the top and 19 buttons (0 is bigger than the other ones).
What I did:
For label, I control + drag from the label to the top and margins (Leading Space to Container Margin, Top Space to Top Layout Guide, Trailing Space to Container Margin). Then for the bottom part warning, I went and Update Frame. This works.
For the buttons I set Equal Heights for all of them and Equal Widths for all of them expect the bigger button (0). For the buttons from the upper part again I control drag from them to the label and set Vertical (I don't want any space between them, and I don't know what to set here). For the buttons from the right I control + drag and set Trailing Space to Container Margin. For the bottom ones I control + drag and set Bottom Space to Bottom Layout Guide. Same thing for the left buttons.
I am not sure what to do for the buttons in the middle. I don't want any space between any control, but from the tutorials I didn't saw how to control drag from one control to another and tell it to not be space between them.
Any suggestions how to fix my alignment issues ? I always get: Need Constraint for: X/Y Position errors.
Related
I want to have 15 buttons equally spaced between them and correctly leading and trailing the superview vertically. I set constraints so that the left set of buttons aligns to the left margin and the right set aligns to the right margin. The first button leads from the top margin in each set, and the remaining buttons each have a constraint for vertical space set to the upper neighbor. I thought this would be enough to make it work but it wasn't. As you can see, for an iPhone 4, the number of buttons displayed on the screen is only 12 so I would definitely need to somehow dynamically change the button size depending on the screen size. I am attaching a screenshot from the storyboard that shows the Any x Any editor view and a preview for the 3.5-inch screen.
This was really easy to accomplish using stack views. Simply select all the buttons and click the leftmost icon (bottom right side of left pane) which is named Stack, and see the magic happening!
Try to set the constraints like this:
First select the all elements on left side and give leading constraint:
Now select first element and give top constraint:
Now select the second element and select it , and drag it to first element and give vertical spacing: , repeat giving vertical spacing for all the elements, So that each element will be vertical space constrained with its top element!!.
Do the same for elements on right side.
Give the trailing constraints for all elements on left,
and the select top element and give top constraint
and then select one element below top element and give vertical spacing between those two, repeat it for all the elements!!! So that each element will be vertical space constrained with its top element!!
Note: I only gave left constraints, you can try for right side too!!!!!
Add height constrain to the top left button to be 1/15 of the superview height and for all buttons let their height equal to the top left one.
Note it will work only if the vertical spacing is zero between buttons.
If you have a vertical space value for example x, then set it as 1/15 - 14 * x
Note #2 in iOS 9 only, seems the stack view will help perfectly in that
Everything looks fine in IB. When I run my app using an iPhone5/iPhone6/iPad sims, it's completely mangled.
In IB:
In iPhone6 sim:
In the above sim, the buttons are cut. The textfield and textview are also cut. For the TF & TV, they are aligned center but trail off the edges on both sides.
I have the buttons width set
Editor > Pin > Widths Equally
The title label is set with a
Horizontal Center in Container
constraint
The textfield and textview also have
Horizontal Center in Container
and
Editor > Pin > Width
Is there some way to fix this?
-- EDIT --
After a few tries with constraints, looks like I have everything working except the two buttons.
Current listing of constraints:
As suggested by others, you should consider using the Auto-layout feature if you plan on constructing your views using the IB.
Here are some tutorial links:
RayWenderlich.com Part One
Youtube video This one covers a bit of size clases
Hope they help.
UPDATED:
I've read your updated post, you need to add width and height constraints. The view you see in the IB right now is 600 by 600 points, and the simulator one is smaller, which means that if you leave it as is, when you run the app you'll only see what the iphone screen has the capacity to show.
You need to add more constraints than what you used, try defining an equal width for the buttons, and assign the left one a left margin constraint, the right one a right margin constraint, give both of them vertical spacing constraint related to the text view or long label, the text view or long label should have left and right margin constraints, a height constraint and a top constraint to the textfield, the textfield should have a vertical spacing constraint to the label, also left and right and height constraint, and last the label should have leff, right and height constraints plus a top constraint to the main view.
I feel that those are all you need, but Xcode will through warnings at you if it feels you are missing something.
Try it, and let us know.
I am struggling to align 5 items in a row using auto layout as shown in the storyboard.
I can align the 3 items highlighted below but the 2 inbetween just don't want to align.
I have tried pinning the items to the buttons next to each of the items and setting the size but they refuse to align properly. Have also tried setting the 2 misplaced buttons to the leading and trialing container as shown below but these still do not align properly (or even closely).
Am I doing something wrong?
The way to do this is with spacer views. You need to add a UIView between each of your views and give them each horizontal spacing constraints to the view on either side. You'll need to edit these constraints so they are between the spacer's leading or trailing edge, and the view's centerX (the constant value should be 0). Give the spacers equal widths (but no fixed width), a fixed height, and a clear background color. You views on the left and right sides should have constraints to their closest edge, but the center view shouldn't have a centerX constraint (it's not needed). This will cause the views to be equally spaced in all screen sizes, and in both orientations.
Your best bet might be to create another superview (UIView) within which your button items are located. Then you can align your buttons more fluidly within that superview that encapsulates only those buttons rather than just wrestling with the constraints within the card superview, which it seems you are doing. Just make the background of that UIView clear, place the buttons on it, and it will appear exactly the same and you'll have a better way to anchor your views. This could also come in handy when you're targeting the functionality of just those buttons so you can grab them from the subviews of the button bar superview.
I'm attempting to have two buttons side by side that look correct across all devices but no matter what constraints I seem to add in I keep getting issues similar to this (one button larger then the other):
Any ideas what I'm doing wrong as far as adding in constraints? I'm not using code for this simply doing it through the InterfaceBuilder in Storyboard.
Constraints set:
Reply: Leading Space, Bottom Space, Height Equals :45, Trailing to Delete Button
Delete: Trailing Space, Bottom Space, 32:9 Ratio, Height Equals :45, Leading to Reply Btn
With both buttons selected, go to Editor > Pin > Widths Equally. Then set the height, leading/trailing space, space between the buttons, and bottom space.
According to me add following constraints
Select Reply button adds leading space and bottom space to superview
Add center Y constraints to delete button
Then align top and bottom space to delete button and also add trailing space to delete button
After this select delete button add bottom space and trailing space.
I had similar operations on one of my view, please see this picture for more info
Happy Codding :)
You need to add a constraint for equal widths, and also remove the '32:9 ratio' constraint, which is currently setting a width for the "Delete" button w/o having a set width for the "Reply" button. That's what's causing the issue.
If you then still have the leading & trailing edges pinned to their respective sides of the container view, and set the space between them to zero, then you should be good.
I've got a widget that is not laying out correctly on device (its looks OK in IB, but its not quite right). The widget is a label and its located about mid-screen. Interface Builder gave it a Vertical Space Constraint with a 'Bottom Anchor'. Here, bottom means bottom of the screen (rather than a widget below, or anchor to top screen).
I'm in the inspector, but I don't see how to change to a top anchor (preferably, to the widget above). I tried reading Apple's docs and Editing Constraints in particular, but it was a confusing and did not explain how to make the change (or I missed the discussion - which was 7 sentences).
Below is a screen capture under Interface Builder showing the Vertical Space Constraint anchored to the bottom of the screen. And its attributes leave a lot to be desired - Equal, Constant and Priority don't really help.
Does anyone know how to edit constraints? Specifically, I want to (1) change a vertical spacer's anchor from bottom to top; and (2) anchor against the widget above, and not the top of the screen.
Select the "Embedded" and the "Calculated" element together by shift-clicking.
With those two elements selected, use the constraints menu:
This menu, together with careful selection of elements, is central to happy editing of constraints in IB. In your case, choose the central item, the Pin menu. Choose Vertical Spacing - this will create a new constraint on vertical spacing between your two elements. Alternatively, select a single element and pin "Top space to superview" to pin to the top instead of the bottom.
You can now select and delete the vertical spacing to the bottom of the view. IB wouldn't let you delete this before since you have to have a complete, non-ambiguous set of constraints. After adding your new vertical spacing constraint, you now have this.
To illustrate further, here is an empty view controller, with a single text field which I have dragged on:
All of the constraints are purple, which means IB has added them for me (they are System constraints) and they can't be removed - they are the minimum constraints needed to position and size the text field.
Now, I'll select the text field, and pin the top space to the superview:
Now you can see that the two vertical space constraints have changed to blue (they are now user constraints) and they have a thicker appearance in the editor. This means that one of them can be deleted. I select the constraint for the bottom space and hit delete:
Note that this still has the appearance of a user constraint - but if I try to delete it, IB will automatically recreate the system constraint pinning to the bottom of the superview, getting us back to square one.
I have written about this, and similar autolayout topics, here.
I got one word for Autolayouts. If it works, it works but if it does not, then use the old fashioned way (use code)