IB - Dragging items into `scrollview` without repositioing? - ios

I have unfortunately decided to make my app using the IB, which I discovered was a terrible choice, but I'm afraid I must deal with it.
So originally, I had all my fields, buttons, etc, placed on a single view, with enough space left on the bottom that on the 3.5" screens everything displays neatly.
Well was that a terrible idea. Now I need to add just a few more things to the screen, and although it works in the 4" mode, 3.5" is out of luck. "Ah ha," I thought, "All I need to do is add a scrollview containing everything on my screen, and for the 3.5", it will scroll instead of reposition.
Long story short, I added my subview, placed it as the very back object on my screen, draged all items into it... And I got a mess.
Ain't that just dandy.
Anyways, I would like to know if there is someway to get Xcode to not reposition all these elements when I do this, or, is there another way to get all these elements to become subviews under this scrollview.

First select all the views from the tree on the left. Then click once on the view controller's frame (the black status bar, not the objects inside the controller). Now press cntl-c to copy all of them. Now double click on the view you wish to add them to and paste them. This will retain all the view's layout locations. If they don't copy over exactly into position just hold down shift and press the arrow keys to get them into position. Dragging the views into another view reset all the position back to the center.

Related

How do I get a button to position on the bottom of a view controller in Xcode 7.2?

I used to be able to do this:
UIButton *bigBottomBtn=[[UIButton alloc]initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, self.view.frame.size.height-60, self.view.frame.size.width, 60)];
I also used to be able to just drag a button onto a storyboard and add a constraint that would hold it to the bottom of the parent.
What is going on with Xcode, Autolayout and Apple for that matter....is my Xcode not working properly? Have I missed a major memo? is Apple just going downhill fast?
Your button-creating code used to work (and still does) if self.view's frame was correct at the time you created the button. Note that the view doesn't necessarily come out of the xib or storyboard with the correct frame; the xib/storyboard contains the view at some design size which might not match the current device. This wasn't as much of a problem when all iPhones had 3.5 inch screens, but became a pretty common problem with the advent of the iPhone 5's 4 inch screen.
The view isn't guaranteed to have its correct frame until its superview's layoutSubviews returns, so if for example you're creating bigBottomBtn in viewDidLoad, that's too early. Many questions on stackoverflow cover this problem. You either need to set the autoresizingMask of the button, or implement layoutSubviews or viewDidLayoutSubviews to update the button's frame, or turn off translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints and install constraints. Note too that your view can change size if you support rotation, slide over or split view multitasking, or if your view can be the detail view of a UISplitViewController, so it's a bad idea to try to guess the correct frame of the button based on the device's screen size at the moment the button is created.
Note that storyboards now by default use a design size of 600x600, which isn't the size of any device. This is probably because if Apple chose some device's size (say, the iPhone 5's 320x568) as the default, and you happened to use a device of that size as your primary (or only) test device, you could easily forget to think about what your app will look like at other sizes. However, you can explicitly set the design size to some device's size if you want:
I usually use “iPhone 3.5-inch” if I don't specifically need something bigger, because it lets me get the most scenes on the screen simultaneously (and produces the smallest screen shots for stackoverflow).
As for “I also used to be able to just drag a button onto a storyboard and add a constraint that would hold it to the bottom of the parent”, I have good news: you still can. Example:
However, you do need to be careful if you have filled your root view with a table view as appears to be the case in your screen shots. You need to drag the button to the document outline in that case, because if you drop it on the table view, Xcode will assume you want it to be the table view header:
Trying to pin a table view header to the bottom of the screen would be folly.
As for the Editor > Align menu, I have found that the items can be mysteriously inactive, which is frustrating.
Note, though, that only the “Horizontally in Container” and “Vertically in Container” will work (when they work at all) with a single view selected. To use the other items in the menu, you need to have at least two views selected, because the other items align the selected views with each other by setting their frames:
If you only have one view selected, Xcode doesn't know what other view you might want to align it to.
Those menu items are perhaps useful in the springs'n'struts model, but they don't add constraints, and under autolayout you probably want constraints to enforce the alignment at run time.
As far as I know, those menu items have never added constraints, but I'm not going to reinstall Xcode 6 to verify that, because there's a convenient popover that will add constraints corresponding to all of those menu items:
In xcode you always need to add buttons according to its visibility. As you said you need to show button on top of tableView and it should be aligned to bottom. For that You just need to arrange the order of items. as shown in the image below.Provide the layout for the button.

How to display UIView that's outside of screen in main.storyboard?

I'm working on a screen that has a UITableView below the screen(thus invisible) initially, but will pop up when user click on a button. I know it's not supposed to be seen on the screen, but just for the sake of design, is there a way to make it visible when I'm working on main.storyboard?
Please see the picture attached below. It's really hard to work on the UITableView when it's beneath the toolbar. How can I force xcode to display them so it's much easier to work on?
You can't, but you have 3 workarounds:
Move it into view (Xcode will complain that it's not in the right position, but it doesn't matter)
On the bottom left on your storyboard, you can open up the view hierarchy, you can find your element there for creating constraints, linking it with your code and everything else you'd want to do.
Increase the visible size of the viewcontroller on your storyboard, trough selecting your viewcontroller on the storyboard, changing Simulated Size to freeform and increasing the values (will not affect size when running).
The easiest way to deal with this is to:
open storyboard
select the viewcontroller you want to edit
open the Size Inspector
Switch from Fixed to Freeform
Type in a larger height (like 1000)
Simplest thing is to manually do what your button does in the app.
In the view hierarchy on the left, select your table view and move it down to the bottom. This will bring it to the front in interface builder.
When you are done, move it back.
I do this all the time and you get used to doing it. Just watch out for accidentally moving it inside another view when you drag it down or up.

Interface Builder is not letting me delete a button

To clarify: I have a view/vc which is designed as an orphaned scene in IB in the storyboard it is used within. This view has a button with an image, a height and width constraint, a left and top constraint. There is a table below it with top, left, bottom, right constraints set to 0. A seperate VC loads this view, sets its width to half the screen and animates it coming in and sets its delegate.
All's honky dory. Now, we wanted to edit the sizing of the button and some miscellaneous things. I noticed the constraints seemed to not be getting applied in simulator. I then, after a while of playing with constraints and losing my mind, decided that maybe something more fundamentally wrong was occurring so i decided to delete the button and see where the table below it is getting placed with it's constraints set.
Then, nothing. The button is still there. I have looked to see if I accidentally c/ped it, and I have not. Is this a known bug?
Clean the project and delete the app on simulator.

Best way to have "float over" controls for a UICollectionViewController?

I have a UICollectionViewController setup. It shows something kind of like a gantt chart, with selectable bars, scrolling, etc. I want to have a "trash/delete" button that always floats in the bottom right of the screen, regardless of scroll. It will delete the current selection (if there's one) in the UICollectionView.
I see two basic approaches:
Use the Supplementary Views facility of my UICollectionView. What I dread about this, is that I'll have to muck with its layout in my layout (I'm using my own subclass of UICollectionViewLayout) to keep it positioned in the bottom right corner, regardless of scroll.
Just add a UIButton to the canvas and set it up there. Maybe this isn't even a real approach, because this is what I wanted to do. While my button may manipulate items found in the UICollectionView, it's not really a real member of the collection view. But I found when I tried to drag a UIButton onto my Controller in the storyboard, it wouldn't stick. It doesn't seem to want to add it. Do I have to change to use a UISingleViewController, and then have a top level view that I can add both my button and collection view into? And then repeat all of the handy delegate/property setup that I get for free from UICollectionViewController?
You:
drag a button on to the view
in storyboard/xib.
Then, in the hierarchy column on the left, ensure it is at the bottom. That means it will be in front of everything else.
So, if necessary move it so it is in front of (ie, below in hierarchy) the collection view.
Note that there is absolutely no problem, at all, with putting one control "in front of" the other (i.e., so that it "blocks" you from seeing all or part of the other one).
If you had a problem doing this, you've made a trivial mistake. For example you may have dragged the new button "into" the collection view, rather than as a "sibling of" the collection view. Hope it helps.

ViewController gets misplaced, when a view size is adjusted

I'm quite new to the Xcode programming. I've added some view controller, labels, buttons and image view to my program, but, when I try to adjust, for example, the size of a label, the view controller that that label is in, gets displaced. I mean, when I try to drag the side of the label to change its size, the view controller moves down, making my label get displaced in the view controller. It is a very weird situation, here you have the screenshot of my project, the view controller misplaced is the one that says "Perfil" on the navigation bar. Every time I try to change one of those light blue views size, the entire view controller changes place. The more I try to change the side the more it will go down.
Sorry for my English, not my native language.
I think the bigger issue is that you are using Table View Cells that are not part of a table view.
Table ViewCells are supposed to be a part of a UITableView and not just stuck in a view.
Using UITableViewCells in this way is what is causing the strange behavior.
If you are trying to make a table, put a UITableView in your view, and then you can customize the table view cells in there.
It you aren't trying to make a table, just use UIView's instead of those UITableViewCells.
I have two ideas that may fix the problem:
First, if you're trying to drag and drop the label but the view controller moves instead, then you might just be grabbing the view controller's background by mistake. When this happened to me, it was because the order of my components in the xib file was wrong. Things are ordered from back to front, and when you click and drag something, you'll just be clicking and dragging whatever's on top. You can try and get past this by clicking the UI element on the left to be sure you select it, then dragging the handles.
It looks like you have things in a reasonable order, so that may not be the culprit at all.
Second, if that doesn't work, select the element you want to edit on the left, then open up the utilities pane on the right. Click the Attributes icon (should be fourth from the left) and look towards the bottom. You should see something like this:
Just manually edit the position and size of your labels there. You should see the change immediately reflected in the display.
Hope this helps!
Setting no autoresize behavior in Interface Builder solves the issue.

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