I am trying to create an iOS UI where I have a set of subviews arranged as a grid on the UI and on clicking any of them I would like to expand this subview to a larger size. I am able to do the animation to expand this subview but I would also like this functionality such that other subviews nearby are pushed away.
On dimissing, this expanded view it should contract to the original size and bring back the other views to its original location.
I am thinking of a variety of ways to implement this but there are many use cases, and hence I would like some pointers in the right direction?
Does iOS itself provide a functionality by which expanding a sibling view contracts/moves the neighboring one? If not, what other ways are there to implement this?
Toms
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I am building an app about meetings where I want to show a preview of the VIP participants in each meeting cell.
These participants are not clickable nor scrollable, the only purpose it's to quickly see them at a glance.
The problem is that the view is very dynamic:
VIP's appear with image or initials
The rest of the attendees is just a number
if >5 VIP's, the circles start going together overlapping (spacing goes smaller)
if 9 VIPs, big wrapping circle “All VIPs in Attendance"
This is how it will look:
What should I do?
CollectionView (seems over-kill as I am not interested in any kind of interaction with the images)?
StackView?
Images (and change constrains programmatically)?
NOTE:
These is just one kind of Table View Cell, but we have a lot more variations, so we are building the custom cells in xib files. Xcode doesn't allow me to add a Collection View Cell in to the Collection View within the xib.
Interesting task - I'm sure there are numerous approaches, but here is one using UIStackView plus some on-the-fly calculations.
The idea is to define a maximum gap between views; a maximum width for all views; calculate the actual gap needed, and then let UIStackview handle the actual positioning.
Certainly not every feature you need, but should get you going in the right direction.
You can see/download the source for this here: https://github.com/DonMag/ScratchPad
Look at the Swift3/SpreadingViews sub-project for this example.
The problem with scrollable views (UIScrollView based views as UICollectionView), is that you will have to deal with the scroll, or pre-compute the width of your content, which is not always easy. For this reason, if you don't want to have scrollable content, I'd not use a UICollectionView, neither any UIScrollView based view.
Then you have the option to go with an UIStackView. Stack views are great to "append" multiple views and create some kind of "pile" of views in a very easy way. However, if you don't control how many items you need, you will overpass the boundaries of your container view.
Therefore, this is what I'd do:
"Fixed container view width" case: If your container view (your cell) has a fixed width (that never changes), I'd manually add as many UIImageViews I want to support in the XIB itself, and then hide/unhide them depending on the number of items I want to display.
"Variable container view width" case: If your container view (your cell) has a variable width (that changes depending on the screen size or whatever other factor), then you will have to compute in any case (do the math!) the amount of items you are able to display within the width you have available. Then, you can choose between using an UIStackView or adding your views & constraints manually to your container view.
Does what I say make sense?
Thanks,
Instead of the standard dots that Apple provides for a page control, I want to have something like this. However I don't want it to be in an infinite loop were you can circle around. All I care about is the scrollable text on top, not the parallax image.
Currently I have a paging scrollview that contains three view controllers so my custom page control will have only three words: Main, Today, Settings.
The way I see this being built is the following:
Subclass UIView and insert three UIButton's and evenly space them. The title of the buttons will be Main, Today, Settings.
Insert this UIView as child of scrollview (or maybe not)
Make UIView the width of the iPhone screen
Not sure about here now -> as you scroll the scrollview shift the UIView on and off the screen so that the UIButton will be centered in one of the view controllers in the scrollview.
Am I on right track or does anyone have a demo to this?
Yes. You are on right track. You can use scrollView for this exact purpose. You have to make use of scrollViewDelegate methods for this. The below link will explain you how to do that.
How to make Paging with scrollView.
I'm trying to do a custom layout like the Chanel app you can find the app in the Appstore.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chanel-fashion/id409934435?mt=8
I know they are using an UICollectionView, but no clue how to start.
The interaction feels like a tableview mixed with a paginated scroll. When you scroll the elements grow, and the first element position itself at the top.
Start with dragging & positioning just one UIView. See UIGestureRecognizer docs and look for existing examples of movable views. You'll need an UIPanGestureRecognizer to move the view.
Resize the view depending on its Y position.
Create & position an image inside that view depending on the view size using a couple autolayout constraints.
Note that Chanel app has different constants for these constraints. With a minimum view height, one image's top is 80% height, for another image it's 90% height. Make sure you can manipulate constraints from code (I think it's a good idea to create everything from code there, XIBs are not very flexible).
Make the view "anchoring" to certain points (e.g. top = -75%, 0%, 75%, 90% from what I see in the Chanel app) when you stop moving it. Just find the nearest one and animate the view to it.
Once you did it with 1 view, move all your work to an NSView subclass (if it's not yet there) and create a collection of these views.
You can create UICollectionView, but I'd rather do it with a simple NSArray: I actually don't see a reason to use UICollectionView here; it's a very simple structure. Anyway, you write your own gesture recognizer (don't you? I can't see another way) - so what's the point to use UICollectionView? If you want to expand the app functionality some day, UICollectionView will unlikely help you with that. Well, it's my hypothetical approach, you can find another one while working on that.
Position other views while you're moving an "active" view. Do it by hand, without any UIScrollViews.
Write a function that reflects the Y position of the "neighbor" views while you moving one. It should "slow down" to the bottom of screen.
I am relatively new to working with iOS, and I need some help wrapping my head around the way to construct this view :-)
What I want to accomplish is to have a view with a horizontal and a vertical split, thus making four quadrants, each being an independent view. At the cross between the vertical and the horizontal splits I want to put a draggable button that, when dragged, will control the position of both splits. This button will be relatively big, so it will overlap with the central corners of all four quadrants.
Furthermore, I would like each of the four quadrants to be scrollable in all directions.
I have been looking at ScrollViews, TableViews, and containers, but I really need a pointer in the right direction :-) How do I structure this layout in XCode?
You definitely want to use a custom container controller (with 4 container views) to do this, assuming that by independent views, you mean separate view controllers. The custom container controller can be set up in IB, by dragging in container views and sizing them how you want. The button would be a subview of the container controller over top the 4 container views. If you want the views in each of the quadrants to be scrollable, then you would need to add a scroll view to each of them, and give them a large enough content view so that they need to scroll in both directions.
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.