ios: storyboard + tabbar + more button (design) - ios

I have a little app that shows a list of dvds, then you can drill down from the table view and get some details. It also has a tab bar at the bottom and you can switch from dvds to bluray as tab buttons. This all works fine.
In reading about tab bar apps, I saw a demo that once you added more than 5 tab bar buttons, "more" would show up and then you can drag-n-drop the buttons like in Apple's Music app, which is cool! I also noticed that each tab bar button controlled a separate navigation controller, which was a new technique to me.
When I created my app, it had a single navigation controller and I added a view controller with the top of the view being a table view and the bottom of the view a tab bar. I then drag buttons to the button bar and can add more than 5 buttons and "more" doesn't show up.
So, I figure, it needs to to be a different navigation controller design.
I am confused on if I can take my app and embed a tab view controller or if I can adapt what I have or not.
Right now, since all tabs are basically the same (a table that drills down to a detail view) I just reload the data from a different file when the tab is switched. Nice and clean.
If I switched to the tab view controller concept, it seems wasteful to create 5 navigation controllers with 5 table views that drill down to 5 detail views. Plus what if I wanted 7? or 9? (I do realize (or guess) that I can give each 5 views the same class name, but still the UI has lots of storyboards…)
This is a design question to better understand what my options are.

Tab bar controller must always be the root controller of an application. (Unless it's in a split view, in which case the different sides of the split can be a tab bar controller - but it still has to be the root.)
So, the correct design for your app is: tab bar controller as root, each tab containing a navigation controller, each navigation controller having your table view controller as the first view controller. It may seem wasteful but if you think about it, each tab really needs to have its own stack of controllers, so there's no other reasonable way to do it. If user on tab 1 is 2 deep in a nav stack but tab 2 is 7 deep you don't want to switch between tabs and lose your place.

Related

Navigation bar breaks in Tableview / detail view inside Tab bar controller

This is a bit of a tricky one to explain here so I'm hoping the screenshot of the storyboard of the app I'm trying to build helps to clarify what I'm trying to do.
Basically the apps starts with a nav controller and table view, when you click on a cell in the table view you go to a tab bar controller with three tabs, each tab view has its own navigation controller and subsequently there is a navigation bar on each of them, so at this point there is a back button on all tab views which takes us back to the initial table view.
The first tab view simply has some text, the next has a table view with several table cells and the last has a map view with several markers. Both the table cell and the map markers link to a detail view via a navigation controller which shows more detailed information (both via named segues). It's at this point of clicking through to the detail view where the navigation is breaking, the detail page shows no navigation bar although it is there as the title text is set, but there is no back button and it seems that the navigation context / hierarchy has been broken here somehow. The appearance of the storyboard also reflects this as it shows no Back button on the navbar on the navigation controller or the Detail view.
Without initially getting into the code in any real way I am just trying to see if there is any significant reason why these type of structure / hierarchy is just now going to work. So, my main question is does this storyboard structure seem like the correct way to go about what I'm trying to do?
Here is the storyboard:

Changing tabs on Tab Based Application Pushes UI Elements Down

I have a tabbed based iOS application. The fourth tab is linked to a UINavigationController. When I navigate to the home tab from the fourth tab, the UI elements of the home tab are pushed down. However, if I rotate the phone to landscape and then back to portrait, everything has moved up and is in the correct place.
In Storyboard, I set the top bar to none. I have the UINavigationBar hidden in the fourth tab/view controller before I navigate to the home tab.
Why would it be that the rotation fixes the constraints? How can I fix the UI elements such that they are not pushed down in the first place?
Here is a screen shot of my storyboard:
Your question doesn't really make sense. A 4th tab would not be embedded in a navigation controller. Instead, the 4th tab would link to a navigation controller. When you first select that tab you'd see the root view controller and it's navigation bar item. If you pushed a new view controller it would get pushed onto the navigation controller in tab 4. If you switch to one of the other tabs then the navigation controller will be swapped away and it's navigation bar will no longer be visible. Swap back to tab 4 you'll see it again, complete with it's navigation bar.
I created a sample app in order to confirm what I'm describing, as I haven't used tab bar controllers a lot, and not in quite a while I can upload the project if you really need to see it. It only contains a couple of lines of code (to implement the button on the navigation controller's view controller that creates and pushes a new view controller.)

Custom/common toolbar in Swift

I'm quite new to Swift and am working on an app where I'm not sure how to setup the navigation. It works with a tab bar, except that I want the bar to display nomatter what view is being displayed. There are 4 "main" views that the user should always be able to get to. The problem comes when I get into subviews of one of those main views.
I have the tab bar with the 4 icons for the primary views. It's currently displaying the "activity list". When the user clicks on an activity, it will display a list at the next level of detail. However, that view is not one of the primary ones that is represented in the tab bar, so it has no tab bar and no way to transition directly to one of the primary views. You have to back your way out to the Activity list before you can select a different tab.
Say that the main views (represented in the tab bar) are A, B, C, and D. I want to be able to display the same toolbar on all sub-views (e.g. C-1, C-2, etc.) and allow direct transition to any of the other main views, without the user having to manually back out of each sub-view.
What is the "best" way to accomplish this?
1) Should I be creating a custom toolbar object that gets implemented on every view controller?
2) Should it be a combination of tab bar and tool bars?
3) If I have drilled into a stack of views, do I need to pop all of those views individually before I can switch to a different tab?
4) What do I use as my "root" view?
Thanks for any suggestions. I have hunted, but haven't found an example of a scenario quite like this.
I think I figured it out. I needed to embed each "tab" view in a navigation controller.
So...
Tab Bar Controller --> Navigation Controller --> View Controller --> "view stack"
The tab bar now remains at the bottom for every view, and if I touch the tab icon a second time, it goes back to the original tab view controller.

iOS: TabController not showing with Navigation Controller

I have an app with the start screen consisting of a table menu main which links to 4 different views, then three options to information pages.
Once on any of the main menu options are chosen, the view is shown with TabBar at the bottom of the main menu options. While the nav bar at the top has a back button leading to the main menu.
I built the storyboard which goes from a table view select to a single page. After that was working and passing data, I embedded the single view into a Tab Bar Controller and added a second page. It seems to be working as I would expect however the Tab Bar is not visible on the screen.
Can please anyone help?
I have added an image of the storyboard below:
Get rid of the navigation controller. There is no deed for it so far. Make the tab bar controller your root view.
If you need a navigation conroller within a certrain tab, or some or all of them, then add navigation controllers to those tabs (to the right in your storyboard).

2 tab bar controller, 2 nav bar controller linked to ONE view (storyboard)

I've got a problem with my application UI.
I want to link 2 tab bar controller to one view, but I don't know how to represent it?
To give you the context of my application, I have a series of views controller that give some useful support information for my app. I want theses view to be displayed on both of my tab bar controller menu (one tab bar controller is displayed when the user is logged in, and the other when he's not)
I thought of putting a view controller between the tab bar controller and the navigation controller, which could trigger the view I'm looking to display 'twice', but for some reasons I couldnt get it to work. (I'm not sure if it's the best implementation, too)
Here's a screenshot of what my storyboard look like right now:
http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/5913/41321932.png

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