RTL support for UIScrollView - ios

I am dynamically adding UIButtons of varying sizes to a horizontal scroll view. These buttons are being laid out from right to left, and I am adjusting the content size accordingly. However when the content size becomes bigger than the size of the scrollview, I'm not able to scroll to the left to see what the rest of the content is, it simply bounces back. I can scroll all the way to the right, but the content there is empty. I want to invert the scrolling direction but I'm not sure how to do that.
What is the appropriate way to do this sort of thing?

That's because you're probably still adding the buttons to the left side of your entire content box (the content size is expanded to the right).
In order to support the RTL you're trying to achieve, you ought to keep your scrollview always scrolled to the right when you increase the content size, and move the buttons from their old frames, to the new ones moved towards right as much as you increased the size of the scrollview.
There's a bit of handywork included, so you might want to check into a custom scrollView implementation, either your own, or possibly a library, but I'm not sure if there is one already.

Related

Wrapper does not take it's Intrinsic Content Size as sum of it's children and constraints between them

I am creating popup that measures it's size (here only height) from the its content.
Popup consists of two half (top and bottom). I have decided to wrap top half into separate wrapper view for clean code, so I have added UILabels, UIImages etc. into it in the separate method, but now I am facing problem with it.
Their size for AutoLayout is 0! So, I have a size of popup less than needed:
But if I remove wrapper then everything is OK:
I feel that it is enough data for iOS to render it correctly, but I don't know the command to force iOS to calculate size of wrapper basing on sizes of its subviews and constraints.
I have tried invalidateIntrinsicContentSize on the wrapper, but didn't help.
I am marking up from the code, so I don't forget to set Translates autoresizing masks into constraints to false for child views.
Ok, It is figured out that I forgot to joint top and bottom of wrapper with top of top view and bottom of bottom view respectively.

Why are my autolayout constraints conflicting?

I have an app using scroll view on a page with numerous icons within that scroll view. I don't understand auto layout very well, but I have constrained every single icon to its current canvas value to the view (after measuring and placing each icon in the correct spot). Why are there still conflicts (188 to be precise) and unambiguous positions?
As an example of what I have done in case the above is not clear, I have placed an icon in the top left of the scroll view. I have then constrained that icon on top, bottom, left and right of its current canvas value from the view.
This extremely hard to explain without showing (as in "live-demonstrating"), but I'll give it a try:
Autolayout for Scrollviews works differently than you probably think. You can't simply specify where to place its contents in relation to its bounds like that. After all, the "canvas" of the scroll view determines its size from the content you scroll over, whereas the size of the actual scroll view (lets call it its viewport, or "window onto the canvas") is determined in a different way (for example by constraining it to the elements around it).
This the opposite of how autolayout works for other views, since they are usually constrained by the size of their parent (up to the top view of a view controller and/or the screen bounds).
What you want to do is add all your items in a single view. From the smallest known size, constrain them to one another. Finally their container has a size resulting from its contents, i.e. your items. This is then the size of the "canvas" of the scroll view, so add it and constrain its position somehow (for example centering it horizontally and vertically). Now, the actual size of the scroll view and its position should be constrained by elements surrounding it.
It might take some thinking and training, so maybe you will want to test around in a small training project that only has a limited number of views to figure it out.
Add scroll view on the screen with constraints to parent view
Add content inside of scroll view
Put constraints between added view and parent view (NOT SCROLL VIEW)

UISlider causing horizontal scrolling

I have a simple screen, with a slider and a label positioned next to each other horizontally. I have embedded these inside a UIScrollView (I set this to fill the screen and used 'Add missing constraints'), because I will need vertical scrolling later down the line. I don't however, want horizontal scrolling. I have seen numerous posts on here and other sources about people wanting to disable horizontal scrolling, however I'm not sure that's what I want to do, I think I need to restrict the UISlider from causing the horizontal scrolling; I think it is trying to take up more width than the screen. I have added what I think are the necessary horizontal constraints:
Leading space to container for the UISlider
Horizontal spacing to the UILabel, and
Trailing space to container for the UILabel
But this still causes horizontal scrolling, and the UISlider's are the cause, they are taking up more room than I want, as seen below:
I have tried disabling horizontal scrolling in the code using a few techniques, one being:
func scrollViewDidScroll(scrollView: UIScrollView) {
if scrollView.contentOffset.x>0 {
scrollView.contentOffset.x = 0
}
}
but this does not seem to stop the horizontal scrolling.
Can anyone offer any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
My suggestion is to never use Add missing constraints. It never does what you really want.
Here's the problem. You are laying out your UI on a ViewController in the Storyboard that is square. Apple did this to remind you that you need to be flexible in your design, but it doesn't match the size of any device. When you Add missing constraints, it uses the absolute dimensions of that square to create the constraints which are certainly wrong.
In your specific case, it is giving the slider a width that is too wide, which is why the slider goes off the right side of your screen.
Here's the trick about scroll views. If the contents inside of a scroll view are wider than the scroll view itself, then that content will scroll. The same applies vertically: if the contents inside of a scroll view are taller than the scroll view, then the contents will scroll.
In order to design this to work on all phones, you need to make sure that the contents of the scroll view are laid out correctly for each phone size. Which certainly means you don't want to use specific widths for both the label and the slider because you'll end up with the wrong width for some device, if not all of them.
The best way to do this is to:
Drag out the scroll view and add it to your ViewController. Add constraints to make sure it is properly sized on all phones, such as attaching it on all sides to its superview with a fixed distance.
Drag out a new UIView and drop it on the scroll view. Drag its edges until it exactly matches the size of the scroll view. This will be your content view. Pin all four edges of this content view to the scroll view with offsets of 0.
Here's a tricky bit. Even though you've pinned the content view to the scroll view, its size of free to grow because that is what allows it to be bigger than the scroll view itself and allow there to be content to scroll over. To keep your scroll view from scrolling horizontally, you need to make sure the content view has the same width as the scroll view on all devices. To do that, find the scroll view and the content view in the Document Outline to the left of the Storyboard. Control-drag from the content view to the scroll view and select Equal Widths from the pop-up.
You still haven't told your content view how tall it should be. For now, give it an explicit height constraint of 1000. That will be enough to scroll.
Now, add your label and slider to the content view. In addition to constraining them to each other and to the edges of the content view, you will need to give your label a width constraint. Then Auto Layout will have all of the information it needs to compute the width of your slider. Auto Layout knows how wide the content view is (which will be different on different devices), it knows how wide your label is, and how far everything is from everything else, so it will just stretch the slider to fill in the rest.
If you do all of this, you will have a UI that is properly sized for all devices in all orientations that scrolls vertically.
Just embed all view in your UIScrollView in a UIView, give it the required constraints then the slider and label will stay.
That worked for me just now.
UIScrollView is special when you want use AutoLayout with it, subviews can not be added directly, it needs a container view to constraint the contentSize of UIScrollView, Auto Layout Guide:Working with Scroll Views explains the detail reason, and you can find many solutions to solve UIScrollView's auto layout on Google, Such as this answer.
To be honest, it's confused and complicated to understand UIScrollView's auto layout, but if you overcome this, others auto layout question is easy to resolve.

Simple scroll view constraints change?

I created a scroll view in Xcode that works awesome because of this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PIm8-lKAYw
When I was messing around after I made it I found out that if I clicked on the scroll view and went to Show the Size Inspector or the fifth button on the right hand side of the screen I had the option to make a constraint called Top Space change in value that caused the scroll view to become bigger and smaller. I decided to see if I could find a way to change the constraint programmatically by simply using dot notation and the equaling it to an int value that I wanted.
So what I'm trying to figure out is there a simple way to change these constraints values programmatically that change the scroll view constraints values?
Without actually following that tutorial (and there being no code in your question) I'm going to make a few assumptions.
Yes, it is possible to change the scroll view's content size by manipulating constraints in your code. If you are creating the constraints in a xib or storyboard, you will need to make sure they are hooked up to IBOutlets so that you can access them in your code.
If you have 2 views arranged vertically that affect the vertical content size of your scroll view, increasing the space between these views would also increase the vertical size of your scrollview's content size. The following would increase the space between 2 views by 20 (assuming a multiplier of 1) and subsequently increase the scrollview's vertical space by the same amount.
// This is a vertical space constraint created in your xib or storyboard between 2 views that drive the content size of your scrollview
someVerticalSpaceConstraint.constant += 20;

Vertically spread/spaced screen elements using Autolayout and Interface Builder

I have a relatively simple portrait-only UI, laid out in a Storyboard, with items which I want to vertically spread to fill both 3.5 inch and 4 inch screens.
In other words, I want the spacing between the controls to be adjusted so that the UI nicely fills the screen, irrespective of the screen form factor.
This doesn't seem like an unusual thing to want to do, however I just can't get Interface Builder (within Xcode 5) to add the right constraints - I only seem to be able to get it to add fixed vertical space constraints, which do not adjust for different screen sizes.
Does anyone know how to do this without resorting to programmatic UI construction? I've invested a lot of effort in getting the Storyboard-based UI just right.
The solution needs to work on both iOS 6 and 7. Thanks!
How to do this depends on exactly what kind of adjustment you want when the screen size changes. One way to do it to give the top and bottom most views vertical spacing constraints to the top and bottom of the superview, respectively. Add a view, I usually use a UILabel with no text, in between all the views you have stacked vertically, and give them equal heights to one another. Give one of those "spacer" views a fixed height, but edit it so its priority is less than 1000 (which means it's not mandatory that it be satisfied). Then add spacing constraints between each nearest neighbor above and below each "real" view and the "spacers", so that you have all the views from top to bottom connected together by vertical spacing constraints. When the screen size changes, the only thing that can change will be the height of the "spacers", since the priority is less than 1000, and all other constraints are mandatory. My constraints look like this:
The labels each have the standard (8 point) spacing to the "real" views above and below them. The top and bottom views should have whatever spacing you want to the screen edges.
Apple have now posted a document which describes the officially-endorsed approach to solving this problem:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userexperience/Conceptual/AutolayoutPG/AutoLayoutbyExample/AutoLayoutbyExample.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40010853-CH5-SW8
Summary of the approach: insert spacer views between your controls, which have equal width/height (as applicable) constraints.

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