I am making an iOS app (iPad) that has a very complex layout. I could try to use Auto Layout to accomodate orientation switching, but it's simply to complicated. I would like to have two seperate nib's, one for each orientation.
So here's the question: How do I convert an app using Storyboards to use Nibs/Xibs?
Don't do this unless you really think that you have to. I takes a very long time. With that said, I've been dumb enough to try this a few times, and you really have to edit a lot of code from being segues, to loading up the view controller along with it's NIB name, and then copy all of your designs for each respective view into it's respective NIB.
Good luck!
A better solution might be to have also a copy of your landscape view in storyboards and then switch between the view controllers when rotation occurs to landscape etc.
You can register for rotation events.
Related
To put it simply, my app has two main views: the first serves to choose some values, the second displays a report. Both are TableView based.
The app looks well on iPhone with any screen size and for any orientation, but since the app’s thought to be universal, I want to get rid of those gaps between elements when the app runs on iPad.
I decided to have the app displaying both views on iPad screen simultaneously as official YouTube app does:
(1) and (2) are the first and the second View controller.
I see it this way:
1) Some initial view controller (additional navigation view controller?) checks idiom (iPhone / iPad) and chooses the next viewController. If idiom is iPhone, the first view controller is pushed.
2) If idiom is iPad, the «new» view controller is pushed. It has two view containers containing the fist view and the second view. Containers have autolayout constraints etc.
Questions:
1) Is it a right idea in context of Apple app design philosophy? What’s the better way to create iPad view combining existing ‘iPhone’ views?
2) Where to check for device type? Shall I use the second storyboard or something? Maybe there’s a good tutorial for this case, I didn’t find one.
Thanks in advance!
For the 2nd part of your question I think you want to look into
I think you want to look into Size Classes and Auto Layout
You can make a single view but depending on the size / orientation of the device - you can enable/disable certain components of the view.
You can pin views so that in portrait you have your 1st layout and in a landscape you have your 2nd layout.
With regards to your 1st question - you do have the ability to embed a view inside of another view
I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for - but as far as what apple is pushing I believe size classes is what they "suggest". You can do a lot. The only thing is make sure you turn on the assistant editor into storyboard preview mode it will help a lot.
I use programmatic way to create design parts and I won't use storyboard for design. But at some design I feel it will be easy with storyboard, is it possible to do design in both storyboard and programmatic in one project simultaneously. If so please tell me the process.
You can. Everything you can do in the designer you can do in code (though not vice versa).
You can instantiate the storyboard using the "UIStoryboard FromName" methods. From the storyboard object you can then use "InstantiateInitialViewController" to get the initial view controller of the storyboard. From this point on the storyboard segues will perform as expected.
If you want to jump to a certain part of the storyboard, you simply use the other method on UIStoryboard which takes an Identifier.vc.
Once you are done with your storyboard view controllers you can then get rid of it programmatically as expected (use pop/dismiss depending on how it was presented).
It is similar to the technique used for splitting large storyboards into smaller ones. If you google "splitting large storyboards" you will be able to find a lot of articles which will help you.
Absolutely. Most (if not all) of the objects you see in storyboard are part of the UIKit, which you'll see is imported at the top of every View Controller Xcode makes for you. You can add UI Objects, like a UILabel, to a View using addSubview, for instance.
Technically, you don't need to use the Interface Builder at all (and there was a time when you couldn't), it just makes things incredibly faster to produce.
I'm using storyboards and need to create to different views for portrait and landscape layout. I can't use auto layout in this case because I need to completely rearrange things in some cases.
I found a solution to use two different views and hide or show it depending on the device orientation but it doesn't work very good for me. I have a lot of outlets that I need to connect from xcode designer to code, and it seems that I can't connect two diffrents objects like for example two different buttons to the same IBOutlet. Can I? When I did this only one was really working. Moreover this solutions doesn't seem so efficient.
I took also a different approach and created two different view controllers which I load according to the device orientation, but there's a problem when for example I turn off application change orientation of the device and turn on it again and come back to a view controller that was in the beginning of the navigation stack, then it has an orientation that it has before.
Anyone has some ideas how to solve this problem?
You should only use one ViewController and one view and kind of hard-code the positions of the elements. Like (pseudocode)
if (orientation landscape)
label1.frame = ...
else (orientation portrait)
label1.frame = ...
Maybe you can group parts of the layout within another UIView (select the elements and go in Xcode->Editor Menu->Embed->View. Then connect the new view to the ViewController and push it where you need it.
Take a look at this answer, maybe it helps
Is it a good practise to creates views in xcode and hide them and when required show them?
I am asking that because I prefer to create views visually and not in code.
If the view is to complex(a lot of subviews) should I create a new view controller to it?
I know there isn't a specify question here but I really need a clarification on this matter.
Regards
One of my first iOS applications had a tab bar and views that the user could switch between. Originally it was done by hiding and showing the right views depending on what the user pressed on the tab bar. This ended up being a complex disaster.
I then rewrote the app so that each tab bar view had its own UIViewController with its own set of views. That turned out to be so much easier to manage. (I also changed from using Interface Builder to straight code for creating the views, but that's beside the point and you can continue to use IB if you want.)
As for me, I prefer folowing practice:
Usually, a use storyboards,where views are placed, but if a view is complex, I create a separate XIB file, arrange all subviews there, and then in storyboard drag an UIView subclass and connect my XIB view with it.It helps to avoid mess in storyboard.
As for hiding views, I also don't recommend such practice as it can become very complex to understand your code and all those views are allocated when XIB is loaded, so the mobile developing rule "do as lazy as u can" is not met. We should try to spend as less memory as it's possible.
UIView is the best way to create iOS app, esp. if you want to reuse the code.
For example if you have same view to present in iPad n iPhone then using UIView can result in lots of similar code in View-controller
In another case if your view might need to have multiple table view it can be quite complex to handle each with delegates in ViewController. But separate view will solve this problem.
I have made my 1st open source code after learning how to use View
https://github.com/bishalg/BGRadioList
which I had learned from
http://www.raywenderlich.com/1768/uiview-tutorial-for-ios-how-to-make-a-custom-uiview-in-ios-5-a-5-star-rating-view
About the hiding view - I have used lots of hide and show view codes in my apps but believe me at one point it will become complex and unmanageable if you have lots of views.
I have a ViewController (with navigation) that needs to show 7 different content layouts. I want to keep the same background and nav, the only thing that needs to change is the central UIView.
If I have 7 different UIViews on the same xib/storyboard, can I hide the ones I'm not using or will that ding performance?
Using segues won't work either because they make a mess out of my custom navigation and animations.
Is there a better way to accomplish what I am trying to do? Thanks for suggestions
solution
My design is too custom for using view controller containment so I decided to mimic the idea with a custom UIViewController and two UIViews. It's not too bad and it works rather quickly.
You should look into using view controller containment, then you can load your views from separate nib files and still provide your custom navigation and animations from your container view controller.
Note: This is only really supported from iOS 5.
Generally, it's a good idea to unload views that aren't visible, however, if your views aren't using too much memory (and/or cpu time) hiding them when they're not in use should work fine.
View controller containment is probably what you should be doing if each view has its own unique functionality (i.e. view 1 is a map, view 2 shows some about text, view 3 is an image gallery). UITabBar might be useful, but it depends on your app.
The performance hit would depend on your views' contents. If you haven't done so already, invest some time into learning how to use Instruments (apple's diagnostic tool). Watching the video titled "Optimizing App Performance with Instruments" in the developer resources would be a good start.
My design is too custom for using view controller containment so I decided to mimic the idea with a custom UIViewController and two UIViews. It's not too bad and it works rather quickly.