I am working on a BlackBerry App that has a lot of ImageButtons, LabelFields and MessageBoxes. What appears to be perfect on one screen size, seems a mess on the other. For instance, Vertical Field Managers that are neatly aligned center with LabelFields, are left/right aligned on bigger screens. Images that cover the width of the screen appear too small on larger screens. Is there some mechanism to auto-align and dynamically change images with respect to the screen size. Any ideas and documents that can help in this regard?
Here are some tips for making screens that look good on almost all devices:
Use less images. If you have to use images, use atleast 3-4 for different screen sizes. for example if you need to have an image as the screen header, use images with widths 320px, 480px and 640px. Load image depending on the width of the screen.
Do not use pixel measurements. Use point measurements instead. Most of the devices are similar in terms of physical size, whereas they have huge difference in pixel density. Using this you can have a screen which will look exactly identical on curve (320x240), bold2 (480x360) and bold 4 (640x480). If you notice, they have the same aspect ratio and similar physical size.
Do not hardcode positions. Instead use FIELD_HCENTER and DRAW_HCENTER etc for fields.
Do not use fonts with fixed pixel height. Use fixed point height instead.
If using custom fields, make sure that they can automatically expand according to device and pixel density.
Related
I have a photoshop file with 8 concentric 'rings' (although some aren't rings and are more irregular), with the largest at the 'back' and decreasing in size up to the 8th one being very small in the centre.
The 'rings' are drawn in such a way as that the smaller ones are 'internal' to its 'outer' or next larger ring. Each 'ring' has transparency on its outside, but also on its inside (where the smaller rings would 'sit').
I need to support all iOS devices (Universal App).
The largest image has a default size of 2048x2048 pixels, but every one of the 8 layers has a common 'centre' point around which they need to rotate, and around which they need to be fixed.
So, basically, all 8 have to be layered, one on top of the other, such that their centres are all perfectly aligned.
BUT the size of the artwork is larger than any iOS device, and the auto-layout has to allow for every device size and orientation, with the largest (rear) layer having an 8 point inset from the screen edges.
For those that can't picture this, here is a crude representation, where the dark background is 'transparent' and represents the smaller of the width or height of the iOS device (depending on orientation):
Note: The placement of where each smaller UIImageView is precise. They all share a common centre (the centre of the screen) but each ring sits 'inside' of the larger ring behind it. i.e. the centre of the green, hot pink and baby pink circles are empty / transparent, and no matter what size screen or orientations, they have to nest together perfectly, as they do in the photoshop art assets.
I've spent hours in auto-layout trying to sort this out, and when I've got it working on one device and both orientations, it's not working on any others.
No code to show because I'm trying to do this in IB so I can preview on all devices.
Is this even possible using IB / Auto-Layout or do I have to switch to manually working out the scales by which to resize their UIImageView based on screen width / height at runtime and the relationship between each 'ring'?
Edit:
And unless I'm doing it wrong, embedding each UIImageView into a transparent UIView in order to use the UIView to fake 'insets', this doesn't work because those numbers are hard coded, such that when it's perfect on a 12.9" iPad Pro, on an iPhone SE each 'inset' UIImageView is much more compressed and doesn't sit 'inside' it's next larger ring, but is like a tiny letter O with lots of surrounding blank space, because those 'insets' don't scale. What is 100pts on an iPad is a tiny amount of space, but 100pts on an iPhone SE is a 1/3 of the screen.
You can draw circles using CAShapeLayer and UIBezierPath. Since you are trying to fit this in a square, I'd define container size to be either the width or height of the parent container depending on what's smaller, this will allow for rotation and different screen sizes. As for the center, you can always find it by getting center coordinates of your square container (container.bounds.size.width / 2). To rotate your layers/sublayers you can use this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/3929703/4577610
i wonder what is the best practice for ui design for iOS regarding ui element sizing, especially buttons. In my example all buttons are based on images, no text.
I see two approaches
Absolute Sizes
PRO:
image based buttons do not need rescaling, avoids blurriness
simple setup in interface designer
CON:
buttons look smaller on bigger displays (ipad2 vs. iphone 4) relative to other ui elements
Relative Sizes
PRO:
buttons look better in whole ui appearance across all display resolutions and densities
CON:
buttons may look blurry
interface builder constraints will get a bit more complex
Did i forgot something? Or did i get it wrong?
For now i was designing the ui completely relative to the screen. So lets say a button had the width of 10% of the screen width and an aspect ratio of 1:1. When the ui was completely relative, everything seemed consistent across all devices. But my questions started in the scenario of #2x density buttons. The iphone 4 has a width (portrait mode) of 640 while the ipad2 has an width of 768. Should i create my #2x, 10% button image with a width of 77px or 68px? I would say 77 because downscaling is better than upscaling.
Well, this leads me to my question:
What is the best practice to design the UI? How should we handle the image design for buttons?
Usually the problem is the text got stretched.
You can set the strech area by following this:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/recipes/xcode_help-image_catalog-1.0/chapters/SlicinganImage.html
If you use gradient and it became blur when stretched, you need to draw the gradient using Core Graphics.
I'd say there's no ultimate approach for laying out image buttons in iOS and it always depends on what you're trying to achieve.
In your case I would recommend the following approach:
Use layout constraints to position your buttons properly. Use only
spacing constraints, no width or height constraints!
Set the images for your buttons (either in Interface Builder or in code). Make sure to provide each image asset in all three resolutions #1x, #2x, #3x.
If you have multiple buttons in a row give each of them a different horizontal compression resistance priority. This ensures that in case your buttons don't all fit on screen one (or more of them) will be scaled down to fit.
When assigning an image to a UIButton, that image will determine the button's intrinsicContentSize. Thus, the button will automatically take the size of the image (if no other constraints with a higher priority are present) and it will only scale down if absolutely necessary (see number 3. above).
This approach is only possible if you still leave flexible spaces next to the buttons. If you intend to split the screen equally into three columns for example and each button should take the whole width of a column you have no other choice but do let the system scale down the images for devices with a smaller screen size. It always depends on whether you can allow the buttons to size themselves or if you need to force a width (or height) on the buttons from their superview.
So here's my problem. I am currently trying to create a rectangular enclosure using four more rectangles as borders. So it would look somewhat like this. Keep in mind each side is individual so a rectangle with a border wouldn't work.
Now the actual problem comes with different screen sizes. Specifically the 4s. Since the screen is shorter than other phones, how would I resize the rectangles on the side to fit the height? One of my options was detect the screen size, and then set the height of the rectangle, but I was wondering if there was an easier way since I'd also have to deal with all the other screens.
Rather than hardcoding, you can get the maximum screen size with CGRectGetMaxX(self.frame), similarly there are CGRectGetMidX and CGRectGetMinX. With these three methods, you can set proportional height/width and coordinates for the rectangles.
I'm new to iOS development and am struggling with interface builder to layout a view that has 3 images. I want three images going across the view. So the images will need to be scaled a little differently for different devices. I am hoping to do this with constraints. I am fairly close. Here is a screenshot:
The images are actually resizing and becoming bigger on the larger device screens which is what I want and the spacing is working to stop them from overlapping each other on small devices. I just need to stop the two side images from being stretched tall. I don't want to specify a height constraint because they do need to resize for specific devices sizes. Any help to add a constraint that will make the outer images not stretch tall is much appreciated.
Set the UIImageView 's content mode to be aspect fit. It will be always stretched in it's correct aspect ratio
Instead of Scale to Fill select Aspect Fit
I am programming an app for iPhone and I am using Auto Layout. I understand how #1x, #2x and #3x works, but what I don't understand is how to handle different screen sizes with Auto Layout.
If I want a scene to look good both on iPhone 6+, iPhone 6 and iPhone 5, I need to take into account the very different sizes of each phone. I can't use the same image size (in points) on all iPhones, because it will look too big on smaller phones, or too small on bigger phones. And I don't even want to imagine the hassle of iPad layout.
How can I solve this? Should I use constraints to make all of my images scale dynamically? This sounds doable, but I'm wondering what the best solution is.
Thank you. I'm really at a loss here.
If you want to keep the propotion on different sizes (for instance an image that has the same apparent size in each device) you can use constraints.
One small trick that I usually do is:
Define an aspect ratio constraint (cmd + click beginning in your view and ending in your view):
And then force your view to increase in width or in height (ie: defining constraints for the left and the right).
It all depends on what you want actually, and the constraints/code will vary in different situations.
you could make the #2x and #3x unproportionally bigger than its #1x counter part, then use the UIImageView's intrinsic size to let it become bigger for the different screen sizes
never tried something like this myself but i dont see a reason why it wouldnt work