iOS5 Custom Window rotation issue - ios

So I'm creating and showing a custom window in my iOS app because I'm writing a dynamic alert view that also functions like a growl/toast alert. It works AWESOMELY in ios6 (Hopefully I can open source this baby and you can all check it out)
But anyway, when I run this in ios5, the window that my alerts exist on doesn't seem to rotate with the device/simulator. No matter what, my custom window stays in portrait mode.
The UIWindow is just a UIView subclass, so there's no nice 'shouldRotate' delegate method.
I'm kinda stumped on why this is happening in ios5 but not 6. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated ^_^

My window has a rootviewcontroller, which I completely forgot about. I just needed to implement
- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)toInterfaceOrientation{
return YES;
}
To get it to work.
:-D

It's usually not recommended two use multiple instances of UIWindow in one iOS app. The only valid reason to do so is to support external screens. You should use a UIView instead, ideally managed by a UIViewController.
I assume, (since you didn't provide any code, I can only assume) the reason why your window doesn't 'rotate' is, that it's simply not getting any notifications about device rotation. Only the keyWindow receives them by default.
I would highly recommend to redesign your app to use a properly managed UIView instead. If you desperately don't want that for some reason, you would have to register your instance of UIWindow to receive the UIDeviceOrientationDidChangeNotification and then (in the handler) evaluate what the new orientation is and change the window's frame accordingly (plus maybe other things that need to be done in response to the orientation change)

Related

iOS Swift orientation change animation missing

I'm writing an app in Swift 2.0. The app works fine in every aspect, beside one.
When I tilt the screen of both device and emulator the orientation change animation is missing. Instead of a smooth rotation I get a clunky orientation change. Portrait -> Landscape. Nothing in between.
Giving the fact that the animation should be the default, I would like to know if anybody knows the possible solution to this problem. I searched everywhere and apparently nobody has this problem, instead people try to disable that animation!
After some tests and thanks to Zell.B, I moved the code from didFinishLaunchWithOptions to applicationDidBecomeActive and everything works fine.
Deleting the applicationDidFinishLaunching method from the app delegate class can also cause the lack of animation problem. Adding it back in can fix it.

willRotateToInterfaceOrientation not called on iOS8

I'm using the VFR PDF viewer library in my app, where I present it thus:
ReaderDocument *document = [ReaderDocument withDocumentFilePath:pdfFile password:nil];
ReaderViewController *vc = [[ReaderViewController alloc] initWithReaderDocument:document];
[self.navigationController pushViewController:vc animated:YES];
If I run on iOS7, everything works fine.
If I run my app on iOS8, the willRotateToInterfaceOrientation method in ReaderViewController never gets called, so when the device is rotated the document doesn't get reformatted correctly.
However, if I run the demo app that comes with the library on iOS8, the willRotateToInterfaceOrientation in ReaderViewController does get called, which leads me to believe the library is ok, and I'm doing something wrong (or neglecting to do something) in my app.
I'm rather puzzled at this behaviour. Why doesn't willRotateToInterfaceOrientation get called in my app on iOS8, but it does under the other variations? How can I try to track this down?
I finally managed to resolve my problem; here is what the issue was in case anyone else has the same problem.
My ReaderViewController was being presented from a class that had implemented viewWillTransitionToSize:withTransitionCoordinator:, so the deprecated methods on child view controllers weren't being called.
Also in that implementation it wasn't calling
[super viewWillTransitionToSize:size withTransitionCoordinator:coordinator]
and so the viewWillTransitionToSize:withTransitionCoordinator: method of all child view controllers wasn't being called either.
The fix was to add a call to
[super viewWillTransitionToSize:size withTransitionCoordinator:coordinator]
into the parent VC's viewWillTransitionToSize:withTransitionCoordinator: method, subclass ReaderViewController, then add a viewWillTransitionToSize:withTransitionCoordinator: to my subclass to call the appropriate methods in ReaderViewController.
Simply because willRotateToInterfaceOrientation is no more called in iOS8, it is deprecated.
If the new rotation methods are not implemented, and a project is
compiled with the iOS 8 SDK, the view controllers -will not receive
calls- to the deprecated rotation methods.
A similar question to yours can be found here
Citation of #mluisbrown :
The rotation methods are deprecated in the iOS 8 SDK. This will have
no effect at all on apps built with the iOS 7 SDK, even running in iOS
8 and probably several future versions of iOS.
I struggled a bit with some kind of a similar problem to yours. I tried following Apple recommendation to use viewWillTransitionToSize, which in my case did not solve my problem because this only gets triggered on changes from regular to compact for example an not on rotation.
viewWillTransitionToSize:withTransitionCoordinator: to make
interface-based adjustments.
Which is detailed in apple documentation
Also a video of WWDC 2014 explains this but I can't remember which video it was. Perhaps the one on What's new in Cocoa touch or the one on View Controller Advancements in iOS 8.
EDIT
Note that in my case viewWillTransitionToSize, as explained, was not called because I wasn't changing from regular to compact so there was no size transition, strictly speaking for Apple.
The only solution I fount was to handle this manually in the viewDidLayoutSubviews of the corresponding view controller.
In my case I wanted to keep track of the top cell displayed in a tableview with autolayout. As it wasn't tracked automatically by the system, I had to check that manually and scroll manually to the adequate cell on rotation. That's why I did it that way. It's quite "heavy" but works in my case.
I would also be interested if anyone has an easier solution.

What's causing the massive changes in autorotation in 8.1 compared to 8.0.2?

I'm coding a video processing app and was just about to submit it to the app store when ios 8.1 came out. I updated my iPhone as well as XCode and all hell broke loose. In my simple single viewcontroller interface nothing is rotating anymore except for the statusbar, which also doesn't get automatically hidden anymore in landscape mode...
I figured it was because I was using the deprecated willAnimateRotationToInterfaceOrientation: for what little custom rotation actions I had, so I implemented traitCollectionDidChange: and viewWillTransitionToSize: to specs instead. However viewWillTransitionToSize never gets called in my app and traitCollectionDidChange: is only called once, at startup. The device simply isn't telling the app that the device has rotated.
After googling I've also tried using name:UIDeviceOrientationDidChangeNotification. At least my selector does get called for that one but I don't know how to manually handle all rotation.
My didFinishLaunching... and viewDidLoad are very simple. alloc UIWindow, storyboard, set my viewcontroller from there, make it rootviewcontroller, makekeyandvisible. All based on one of Apple's AVFoundation demo apps.
Then in didload I add some subviews and a toolbar etc, nothing out of the ordinary and obviously it did work on 8.0 and 8.0.2 on all kinds of devices as well as the 7.1 simulator etc. Still runs flawlessly on my iPad with 8.0.2... Reason I haven't posted any code is I'm 100% sure everything is correct on that end.
Main weird thing is I can't seem to find anyone with this problem.
No errors in console or elsewhere either.
Does anyone have any idea of what might be causing this? I didn't think a point release would make such massive differences and again, no one else seems to be having this. Could it be an issue/bug in the actual storyboard file?
And, mainly, since I can get rotation notifications through UIDeviceOrientationDidChangeNotification, how do I manually handle all rotation/resizing stuff? I have been looking all over for answers but to no avail and am out of time to spend on this project currently :(
Cheers!
alloc'ing UIWindow will be the problem.
First, Make sure your navigation controller (or whatever you're using) is set as "Initial View Controller" in your storyboard.
Secondly, in your AppDelegate.m file, remove any references to UIWindow and rootViewController that appear in application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions. In my case, removing the following two lines fixed my issues.
self.window = [[UIWindow alloc] initWithFrame:[[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds]];
[self.window makeKeyAndVisible];
You also don't need to set the window's rootViewController if using storyboards.
They're simply not needed when using storyboards, but until 8.1 there was never any harm using them. It took my 2 days to figure this out, so hopefully it will help you and others too.

iOS5: Best method of forcing UI orientation programmatically

[I know this has been done to death, and I'd ask follow up questions on an existing question were it not for not having enough stackoverflow points to make one:(]
I'm after an App Store valid way of forcing an existing UI to re-orientate without having to destroy the main ViewController or View. We work in fullscreen mode, so I'm assuming I can't use any of the toolbar approaches normally quoted. Finally I'm only interested in iOS5.
For iOS6 I have a solution based on the answers in How to change the device orientation programmatically in iOS 6. I used the solution which includes ForcePortrait, with the variation that I changed it so I can supply the required orientation as a parameter.
For iOS5 I have experimented with the suggestion of:
[UIDevice currentDevice] performSelector:NSSelectorFromString(#"setOrientation:") withObject:(id)UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait];
from How to set device (UI) orientation programmatically?. This works well but I'm worried that it would be rejected by App Store (complete no no for us).
Has anyone used this on something that has App Store approval and/or got a better suggestion?
Check this out: Force Rotate UIViewController.
Maybe it will work. This is however very hackish.
[Found a solution, at any rate. Not sure if it the best.]
Got the temporary UIViewController approach to work by adding shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation. The meaning of this is overloaded by iOS5 to discover not only should it autoRotate but also should it start in a particular orientation to start with - I guess that is why it is replaced by several methods at iOS6.. Thus we return true in orientations that are OK.
Perhaps should have realised that before.
Not quite as neat as the setOrientation hack. Key glitch we've noticed is that when you then rotate the device around to the proper orientation you still get a rotation animation. This does not occur on iOS6. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

iPhone app in landscape mode, 2008 systems

Please note that this question is from 2008 and now is of only historic interest.
What's the best way to create an iPhone application that runs in landscape mode from the start, regardless of the position of the device?
Both programmatically and using the Interface Builder.
Historic answer only. Spectacularly out of date.
Please note that this answer is now hugely out of date/
This answer is only a historical curiosity.
Exciting news! As discovered by Andrew below, this problem has been fixed by Apple in 4.0+.
It would appear it is NO longer necessary to force the size of the view on every view, and the specific serious problem of landscape "only working the first time" has been resolved.
As of April 2011, it is not possible to test or even build anything below 4.0, so the question is purely a historic curiosity. It's incredible how much trouble it caused developers for so long!
Here is the original discussion and solution. This is utterly irrelevant now, as these systems are not even operable.
It is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to make this work fully -- there are at least three problems/bugs at play.
try this .. interface builder landscape design
Note in particular that where it says "and you need to use shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation properly everywhere" it means everywhere, all your fullscreen views.
Hope it helps in this nightmare!
An important reminder of the ADDITIONAL well-known problem at hand here: if you are trying to swap between MORE THAN ONE view (all landscape), IT SIMPLY DOES NOT WORK. It is essential to remember this or you will waste days on the problem. It is literally NOT POSSIBLE. It is the biggest open, known, bug on the iOS platform. There is literally no way to make the hardware make the second view you load, be landscape. The annoying but simple workaround, and what you must do, is have a trivial master UIViewController that does nothing but sit there and let you swap between your views.
In other words, in iOS because of a major know bug:
[window addSubview:happyThing.view];
[window makeKeyAndVisible];
You can do that only once. Later, if you try to remove happyThing.view, and instead put in there newThing.view, IT DOES NOT WORK - AND THAT'S THAT. The machine will never rotate the view to landscape. There is no trick fix, even Apple cannot make it work. The workaround you must adopt is having an overall UIViewController that simply sits there and just holds your various views (happyThing, newThing, etc). Hope it helps!
From the Apple Dev Site:
To start your application in landscape
mode so that the status bar is in the
appropriate position immediately, edit
your Info.plist file to add the
UIInterfaceOrientation key with the
appropriate value
(UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight
or
UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft),
as shown in Listing 2.
Listing 2: Starting your application
in landscape mode
<key>UIInterfaceOrientation</key>
<string>UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight</string>
Summary and integration from all the posts, after testing it myself; check the update for 4.x, 5.x below.
As of 3.2 you cannot change the orientation of a running application from code.
But you can start an application with a fixed orientation, although doing so this is not straightforward.
Try with this recipe:
set your orientation to UISupportedInterfaceOrientations in the Info.plist file
in your window define a 480x320 "base view controller". Every other view will be added as a subview to its view.
in all view controllers set up the shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation: method (to return the same value you defined in the plist, of course)
in all view controllers set a background view with
self.view.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, 480, 320)
in the viewDidLoad method.
Update (iOS 4.x, 5.x): the Apple iOS App Programming Guide has a "Launching in Landscape Mode" paragraph in the "Advanced App Tricks" chapter.
References:
interface builder landscape design
interface builder landscape design-1
First I set in info.plist
<key>UIInterfaceOrientation</key>
<string>UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight</string>
then I put this code in applicationDidFinishLaunching:
CGAffineTransform rotate = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation(1.57079633);
[window setTransform:rotate];
CGRect contentRect = CGRectMake(0, 0, 480, 320);
window.bounds = contentRect;
[window setCenter:CGPointMake(160.0f, 240.0f)];
This way I can work on the view in Interface Builder in landscape mode.
sasb's and michaelpryor's answer appears to be correct, but if it's not working for you, try this alternative:
- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunchingUIApplication *)application {
application.statusBarOrientation = UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight;
}
Or this one:
[[UIDevice currentDevice] setOrientation:UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight];
Or this one:
[application setStatusBarOrientation: UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight animated:NO];
You may also have to call window makeKeyAndVisible; first.
A few links: Developing in landscape mode, iPhone SDK: How to force Landscape mode only?
#Robert: please refer to The iPhone SDK, NDA, and Stack Overflow.
I'm surprised no one has come up with this answer yet:
In all my tests when a dismissing a modal view controller the parent view controller's preferred orientation set in shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation is honored even when part of a UINavigationController. So the solution to this is simple:
Create a dummy UIViewController with a UIImageView for a background. Set the image to the default.png image your app uses on startup.
When viewWillAppear gets called in your root view controller, just present the dummy view controller without animation.
when viewDidAppear gets called in your dummy view controller, dismiss the view controller with a nice cross dissolve animation.
Not only does this work, but it looks good! BTW, just for clarification i do the root view controller's viewWillAppear like this:
- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
if ( dummy != nil ) {
[dummy setModalTransitionStyle:UIModalTransitionStyleCrossDissolve];
[self presentModalViewController:dummy animated:NO];
[dummy release];
dummy = nil;
}
...
}
The latest iPhone OS Programming Guide has a full section on this, with sample code. I am sure this is a recent addition, so maybe you missed it. It explains all the conditions you have to comply with; basically...
set the Info.plist properties (this changes the position of the status bar, but not the view)
rotate your view manually around its center, on either your UIViewController viewDidLoad: method or your applicationDidFinishLaunching: method or implement auto rotation ("Autoresizing behaviors", page 124)
Look for "Launching in Landscape Mode", page 102.
See this answer: Landscape Mode ONLY for iPhone or iPad
add orientation to plist
shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation = YES in all files
Although if you're using mixed modes, you might be better off with
[[UIDevice currentDevice] setOrientation:UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight];

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