I am building an iOS app that allows the user to browse a tableView, click a cell, then navigate deeper into another tableView using a navigationController.
I have a requirement to be able to move any of those items/cells to another place in the navigation stack. Right now my idea is, once the user selects the cells to move, to display a modal tableView that will allow the user to navigate through the same structure as before, but this time choose the location (by pressing and holding) to place those cells.
Are there any other UI ideas or clever programatic ideas that anyone might have that could be a better solution to this problem?
Perhaps take a look at how Apple's iOS Mail moves email messages between different mailboxes?
This also basically displays a modal view controller, but it flattens the hierarchy, by indenting nested items below their parent objects. You than just select the item that is the destination.
This of course only works if your hierarchy is not too deep, otherwise it's probably best to do it like you outlined it. The only thing I would perhaps recommend doing in addition, is to also have some sort of visual method (button?) to select the destination. A long press by itself might not be intuitive enough.
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First of all, I am new in coding, so please be patient with me.
My app has two view controller, the first has UICollectionView and the second has UITextField.
I am trying to tap on one of these collection view cells and then it takes me to the second view controller, where I can type in the textView then save it into CoreData. And then when I go back and press on the same cell i get my saved text. Then when i change this text on the ui text view.. it saved automatically.
Can any one give me an example or put me in the right track
The essence of how that might be done is to implement the collectionview delegate and then determine which cell they clicked on, so that the next screen loads/and updates the correct data. After they click you would call the "segue" with some code. The segues are setup in Xcode's visual editor by control click and dragging a line to the second view. (It's weird, there are some great youtube videos out there) The data would be stored in an array. After you update the data, you could dismiss the second view and the collectionview behind it would be visible again.
I would check out chapter 4.5 of the free iBook "App Development with Swift". Chapters 4.5-4.8 would really get your rocking the right path. If that book is too complex then also look into "Intro to App Development with Swift"
I even have some videos to take you through the process, dunno if I have one for 4.5 but if you continue with it, I have one for 4.6.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5u9SGhQoPY&t=2254s
I am building an app which mainly shows a tableview. In this tableview I have some custom table rows. The table rows are filled with data received from the server. I receive multiple kinds of data from the server. I will store it in arrays.
For example, I've got three kinds of arrays. Each is filled with different kinds of data received from the server. See below:
(NSArray*)carList_
(NSArray*)motorcycleList_
(NSArray*)bicycleList_
The actual program that I've got now, only shows the carList in the tableview. Foreach car in carList, there is a table row.
The thing that I've in mind to do is a little bit tricky. I want to add a tabbar at the bottom of the screen with three buttons. When I press the first button, I want the table to be filled with the carList. When I press the second button, I want to fill the table with the motorcycleList. And when I press the third button, I want to fill the table with the bicycleList.
As you can see, I will use the same tableview. I will only refill it with the data I want to see. Is this allowed in iOS? Cause I read something about that the tabbar is for multiple views, and I only want to use it for changing the data in my table. Only the fourth button I've planned for future development will open a new view. If it is not allowed, what is a good alternative do do it? Buttons maybe? I searched the web for what I want to do, but it seems that my idea has never been used before, I think my idea is not allowed in iOS.
At this moment I've a initialViewController (with almost no code cause it is used only to initialize some things of the server. It acts like a splash screen) and I've got a rootViewController which does the works. In the rootViewController I've got my Table with Table rows and it has the different arrays of data which are retrieved by a method that is called when the rootViewController is loaded.
I am programming without Storyboards, because I'd like coding and I want to understand how it works 'underground'. What is a good way to implement the tabbar if it is allowed what I want to do with it? I don't think a standard tab controller will work, because I am working with only one view.
Of course you can use the UITabBar solution. However this might be not very useful and this is not the idea behind the UITabBar. You can instantiate the same TableViewController vor each tab. In this case you can use the same class but you have up to the instances of this class when the user cycles through the tabs. This will be obvisously a waste of memory.
Your descriptions sounds like a UIToolBar with a UISegmetenControl in it might fit your needs better. You can also place it at the bottom of the screen and you will need just one TableViewController for your data.
UISegmentedControl is designed for switching between different data representations. It is also commonly used for switching between table datasources. But it often appears at the top of a view. Take a look at Top Charts tab of App Store app.
Tab bar is designed to present different views for each tab. Here are progress steps to achieve your result:
Use different instances of table view controller for each tab
Configure each instance for displaying one particular array, depending on tab position
Keep arrays in external (outside table view controller) storage, instances should have an access to it
It's better to preload data, while user is examining an active tab. Hence, load data outside of table view controllers, possibly in AppDelegate. Use notifications to update table view when data are available.
I have been searching for a UI Control and don't know what its called, which makes it tough to find right? What UI Control in iOS 5 or 6 provides a view overlay that can swipe away? Kind of the opposite of a slide-out nav view. I am looking at the TouchArcade app as an example, where you tap an item and this slides out an overlay with an article or review. Its also possible to have several overlay's that can swipe to the right for removal. Is this a custom control? I know this must be an easy question, I just don't know what its called, and therefore, my terms don't help much in Google. The closest thing I have found is ShinobiControls Overlays: http://www.shinobicontrols.com/shinobiessentials/
I'd rather just make my own than rely an somebody else's library I have to keep up to date. On the other hand, that one does look pretty good and would save me time.
Edit:
Picture of TouchArcade as an example overlay view.
You see how the article is presented over the list view below? What controls do that in iOS? It also allows multiple overlays as you click further into each item. You dismiss them by swiping them to the right, dragging them out of view.
I am trying to achieve the following effect:
A UICollectionView displays a grid of cells for a parent type of object, e. g. a photo album. When I tap one of these items, I would like to scroll that element to the top of the screen and open a Springboard like folder from it. Inside that folders area, another collection should be shown, consisting of the detail items, i. e. the individual photos of that album. Tapping in the remaining "parent" view closes the folder again. See this schema:
What I have done so far is a regular collection view for the albums. When I select one, it scrolls to selected item to the top and then uses JWFolders to open an empty folder at that place. Once that is shown, I trigger the surrounding UINavigationController to push my 2nd view controller with the detail items. That one is layed out so it appears to the user as if it were still the same view.
There are several problems with this approach, and I would like to know how to do this better:
JWFolders takes a screenshot and animated two halves of it up/downwards to achieve the opening effect. This is ok, but pretty slow on an iPad3, because it moves a lot of pixels and the iPad3's GPU is not quite up to the task.
The 2nd view needs to be pixel-perfect to match on top of the first one. This is likely to break accidentally.
I am limited as to what animations are possible for the view controller transition. The default UINavigationController's push from the right is not fitting. I override that to do a cross-dissolve, but still it is far from ideal.
I would like to get pointers as to how to approach this problem in a maintainable manner that does not require to much creative hacking against what the frameworks are designed to do. I might be missing something obvious here, so pointers to examples or general advice are appreciated.
Update:
I changed the approach a bit. Now I use a container view controller that has two embedded collection view controllers. One for the "Album" and one for the "Photos" part at the bottom. Using a UIImageView in the middle between the two I can get the triangle pointing upward done. This is also nice from a maintenance point of view, because it makes maintenance easier with the two collections being handled completely separately.
The app uses Auto Layout, so I can change the amount of space each of the two embedded views takes by modifying the constraints. This is way faster than the screenshot based approach with JWFolders and works nicely on an iPad3 as well.
This almost gets me where I want to be. The one thing that remains is to get the opening animation right. I would like to simultaneously scroll the Albums collection, so that the tapped item goes to the top and expand the photos collection with the triangle pointing at the Album cell.
Can I somehow "connect" the lower view to that cell via layout constraints, so that the scrollToItemAtIndexPath:atScrollPosition:animated: call drags the lower view open?
To get around it I would lose the library and cause iOS to move those display elements around without screenshots or other tricks. On the tap, cause the tapped icon to retain its normal appearance while you dim all the others. Find the contents of the collection view from the top to the end of the line where the tapped icon is. Create two new collection views - one which contains the top half, including your tapped icon and one containing the rest, below. Animate those views apart to make room for the folder view.
The folder view is another UICollectionView that appears in the gap created.
In the main view there are either one or three views presented depending on whether the drawer is open or closed. I would probably look at creating a view controller with a collection view, and using view controller containment to manage all three views. You have complete control over how those views are presented, so you could animate top and bottom views up and down simultaneously to reveal the folder view in place, as Springboard does.
When that's all working then you could generalize and start doing things like deciding to make the tapped icon part of the bottom collection with the folder appearing above if the icon was low on the screen.
(I hesitate to answer this because of the large number of upvotes yet no answers, so I may have missed something - but that is how I would begin trying to achieve the Springboard effect.)
To solve this problem in a relatively easy way, you could try to make the folder a simple UICollectionView subclass and then insert that cell when the albums cell is tapped.
In the collection views data source you would have to return different size etc. for the folder cell.
In the folder you would have to create the folders collection view, avoid making the folder cell the data source of the cell folder collection view tho.
Are there any alternative controls instead of UIPickerView in XCode. If yes, how do they work? Can anyone suggest an alternative for UIPickerView?
You can see one in action if you download the free One Stop Plus app (women's clothes), drill down on the products until you get a view with Color, Size, etc. Tapping those buttons animates a table out of the button, with choices. Selecting one causes the table to animate back into the button. If you like that post a comment to this answer and I can tell you how to do it.
With iPhone interface, it is not feasible to enable a Combo box like a website. (I believe even Apple Guidelines would say not to do it). What you need to do is the use the UITableView to enable users to pick one option.
One thing you can do is decide whether you want to have the choice in a view shared with other controls. OR if your list if too long you can chose to push in a new view with only the choices on them and when a user selects one, the view will pop back one level.
Here is a screen shot of what i mean (maybe not the best example out there):