UIScrollView scrolling too slowly and never calling scrollViewDidEndDecelerating - ios

Question

The iPad app I'm working on is a book. To jump to a specific page, the user can press a button that overlays a view top of the current view, displaying images of thumbnails of each page in the book.
When the user goes through the book sequentially and displays this thumbnails menu, the scrolling animation is smooth and fine if the user showed the menu . The problem happens if the user calls showBookmarkMenu after having loaded about fifteen pages, the scrollview animation is very very slow, and the scrollview doesn't catch touches anymore.
I noticed that scrollViewDidEndDecelerating gets called when the scrolling animation is normal and smooth (shortly after loading the app), but it doesn't get called after the user has gone through several pages. So one hypothesis is that the CPU is struggling with the animation of the positioning of the scrollview's content. I ran the app using Instruments' Activity Monitor, but there are times when the app uses 97% and more of the CPU and the scrollview scrolls fine...
Any thoughts on this issue? I've posted my code below.
MainClass.m
//Called when user presses the open/close bookmark menu button
-(IBAction)toggleBookmarksMenu{
if([bookMarkMenu isHidden]){
[currentPage.view addSubview:bookMarkMenu];
[bookMarkMenu showBookmarkMenu];
}
else{
[bookMarkMenu hideBookmarksMenu];
}
}
ScrollViewClass.h
#interface BookmarkManager : UIView<UIScrollViewDelegate>{
UIScrollView *thumbnailScrollView;
}
#property (strong, nonatomic) UIScrollView *thumbnailScrollView;
#property (strong) id <BookmarkManagerDelegate> bookmarkManagerDelegate;
-(void)showBookmarkMenu;
-(void)hideBookmarksMenu;
#end
ScrollViewClass.m
-(void)showBookmarkMenu{
[self setHidden:NO];
[UIView animateWithDuration:0.5
animations:^{
self.center = CGPointMake(512, 384);
}
];
}
-(void)hideBookmarksMenu{
[UIView animateWithDuration:1
animations:^{
self.center = CGPointMake(512, -120);
}
completion:^(BOOL finished){
[self setHidden:YES];
[self removeFromSuperview];
}
];
}
-(id)init{
self = [super initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 1024, 768)];
if(self){
[self setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor]];
self.center = CGPointMake(512, 0);
thumbnailScrollView = [[UIScrollView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 1024, 120)];
[thumbnailScrollView setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor]];
thumbnailScrollView.showsHorizontalScrollIndicator = NO;
//Add the UIButtons with images of the thumbnails
for(int i = 0; i < totalPages; i++){
UIButton *pageThumbnail = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom];
pageThumbnail.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, 125, 95);
[pageThumbnail setBackgroundImage:[UIImage imageWithContentsOfFile:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#/p%d_thumb.png", [[NSBundle mainBundle] resourcePath], i]] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
[thumbnailScrollView addSubview:pageThumbnail];
[pageThumbnail addTarget:self action:#selector(thumbnailTapped:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchDown];
}
[self addSubview:thumbnailScrollView];
[thumbnailScrollView setContentSize:CGSizeMake(totalPages * 125 + (20*(totalPages+1)), 120)];
[thumbnailScrollView setDelegate:self];
[self setHidden:YES];
}
return self;
}

Answer 1

I have to go with possible low memory issue.
A possible alternative to using a slew of buttons is using UITableView. The way your code is currently working, it loads up ALL the buttons with images. For a large book this could be painful.
Using UITableView you only use as much memory as you see (about). And, since each image is loaded dynamically, your memory usage is only as much as is displayed. That would be how I would go about it (actually, I'm doing that now, just not with a book).

Answer 2

A shot in the dark, based on your observation that the scrolling becomes slow after loading 15 pages or so: possibly your device is busy handling a low memory condition. In such cases, as you possibly know, a system wide notification is sent to a considerable number of apps/objects for them to recover as much memory as possible.
Could you check if at more or less the same time when the scrolling becomes slow your app is executing didReceiveMemoryWarning?
If you confirm that the issue could be related to memory saturation/reclaiming, then I would suggest implementing a lazy loading scheme for your images:
you only load images when you are required to display them;
you only keep in memory 3-5 images total, to ensure a smooth scrolling.
The basic step requires id providing your delegate
- (void)scrollViewDidScroll:(UIScrollView *)scrollView;
implementation. Here you will preload images:
knowing your position, you know your current image (say, image number N);
unload images N-2, N+2;
load images N-1, N+1.
The images to load/unload I provided are fine if you just want one "buffer" image.
In any case, if you google "iso scroll view lazy loading" you will find plenty of info.

Answer 3

Turns out it wasn't a low memory issue, but an overly busy CPU issue.
It is the CPU that does the calculations required for the scrollview's scrolling animations, and when the scrolling becomes this slow I thought I'd try to figure out why I was using 97% of the CPU in the first place. Turns out that past page 15, I had CPU-intensive recursive functions (calculating UIBezierPaths for another part of the app) caught in an infinite loop. The app was calculating hundreds of UIBezierPaths a second, and there reached a point where the CPU just couldn't keep up with the calculations for the scrollview's animation.
Once I made sure the recursive functions stopped calling themselves when they were not needed, CPU usage remained under 20% throughout the app, and the scrollview performed perfectly well.