I am currently working on porting my Android tablet application (http://tinyurl.com/cnejnjs
) over to iOS. My application basically consists of a list view on the left and a detail view on the right. Xcode has a built in view controller (Split View Controller) which seems to do a lot of the work for you.
I would like to make the navigation bar on the one large toolbar so I can add multiple controls to filter the list view (see Android app for all the filters that the user can apply). In interface builder with the split view controller I can not find a way to add the toolbar to the top. It seems I could style the two navigation bars, to make them look like one but when the user puts the device into portrait mode the left part of the navigation bar will be removed.
I have managed to build a view similar to what I want from scratch in IB but this would mean I don't get all the split view stuff for free and may make it harder to make an iPhone view if I later decide too.
Which way do you think would be best to approach this type of design?
Related
I am new to iOS development and have a question about what component I should be using for a particular UI aspect. The app I am working on has need for a toolbar to go across the bottom and at times to be visible across all screens. This toolbar is going to be used to manage the playing/pausing of some audio files which will play as the user navigates between screens within the app. My question is should I be using a Toolbar, a Navigation Bar or something else to achieve this?
To create such a toolbar you can use whichever component you want. There is no built-in solution on iOS for such a scenario and there is anything in the human interface guidelines that may help you to make this decision.
From my perspective, the problem here is how to make this toolbar visible on all your screens. This depends on your view controllers hierarchy which I know anything about.
Navigation controller
If you use UInavigationController to organize your screens you can use it's built-in toolbar to achieve your goal. The drawback is that the UIToolbar of UINavigationController is per item view controller so you will need to configure it each time a new UIViewController is pushed on the stack.
Containment
The general solution is using the containment API. You can create let's say root view controller of your application which will contain your toolbar and will host other view controllers of your application. For the presentation purpose, I configured it on a storyboard using a container view. You can see it on the image below.
Modal presentations
Neither of above solutions will work when you decide to display a view controller modally. In this case, you will need to make additional effort to put the toolbar in such a view controller.
Other options
You probably won't be able to achieve that using UITabBarController unless you are very stubborn. But if you are new to iOS I don't recommend trying. The same is for UIPageViewController. I'm not sure about UISplitViewController because I have a very little experience with it.
My app design is very simple, at least with respect to describing the intended user-facing views:
The starting view is initially empty. Pressing a "Select" button in the navigation bar transitions to a split view. On the left (master) are the photo albums on the device. On the right (detail) are the images in a given album. The user can select up to 6 images across all albums. Pressing a "Done" button in the navigation bar transitions back to the starting view, which now displays the selected images in a grid. And that's it.
In my head, this should be as simple as embedding the starting view in a navigation controller and adding a segue from the "Select" button to the split view. But of course, it doesn't work that way. According to the Apple docs:
Although it is possible to install a split view controller as a child
in some other container view controllers, doing is not recommended in
most cases. Split view controllers are normally installed at the root
of your app’s window.
If at all possible, I would like to retain my user-facing design without any shady business. I strongly suspect that there are one or more "sanctioned" ways to accomplish what I want, but I am too inexperienced with iOS development to know what they might be. Any help is appreciated!
If all you want is to pass back to the starting view controller the array of images, than why not just declare a protocol in the Split ViewController that the starting controller can adopt?
I am working on an app for a Cafe where users can "sign in" to their seats.
Currently I am thinking of a way to present basic user information of seated people. What I am envisioning is to when the table gets tap, a square information box (pardon my primitive language) appears in the middle with the background being blurred out. I am hoping to have something flexible so that i can add tab and such to this so called box.
I have been looking at popover alert controllers and apparently there is limited information on them in regards to the iPhone. Is there a reason why popover view is not used for iPhones as compared to iPads? Moreover, is there a smarter UI to handle this or should i just segue to the next view when tapped.
Basically, popovers are iPad-only because iPhone screens are too small to make them effective. UIAlertController is a similar alternative, though it may not lend itself to what you're trying to accomplish.
Segueing to a new view for the user information is definitely a solid option, or if you want to preserve the feeling of staying on the same view you can animate a custom view over top of your current view, often from the bottom in the style of a keyboard or the settings drawer.
I think you are mixing up two different concepts: Alerts vs View Controllers being displayed modally.
Alerts – as the name suggests – are used to bring something important to the attention of the user. They usually interupt the current flow.
View Controllers presented modally are similar to what you discribe: a new View Controller moves over the current one, and the current one is blacked out to put emphasis to the new one. As you rightly pointed out though, this is hardly used on iPhone: This is because iPhones historically have rather small screens, and scaling down a view controller leaves hardly any room for content.
View Controllers presented as popovers is yet another thing: Here, you show the new view controller in a separate window that originates from a specific point in your UI.
This document might be of interest for you.
You may want to use a Modally presented View Controller. For this, you will create the view you want to pop up in a separate view controller. Then, control-drag in a segue from the parent view to the Modal of type Present Modally. You can even get your blurriness by setting your Modal's background to clear and adding a Visual Effect with Blur to its view.
Now, give the segue an identifier in the right hand pane so you can call it programatically.
I can only assume the effect above is happening because Search Display Controllers are normally designed to work with just a navigation bar above them. As you can see, in this design there is a toolbar containing a segmented control underneath the navigation bar.
This is creating quite a mess as can be seen in screenshot two. Is there any way to just disable the Search Display Controller position animating effect or offset it differently in any way?
The end goal was simply to have 3 different lists in 3 different views and have each one filterable. Any ideas how to get around this view glitch?
I'm started to work at new place as iOS programmer. I joined existing project and got an assignment that i don't really know how to approach.
So my problem is this: when you press a button, next window has to have a tab bar with four icons, this means four different navigation stacks. Its not that hard to make, but in main screen i have more then four icons, and if i press any one of them next window always has to have a tab bar with four static icons, like shortcuts or something.
So what should I do? Does anyone had the same situation? I want to start with a good advice to save trouble later on.
You should probably rethink the app design. Tapping an item on the tab bar shouldn't result in a different number of tab bar items, as it leads to an unstable and unpredictable UI.
While not the most efficient in terms of visible content, you could introduce a segmented control (or a similar custom view) on top right under the navigation bar (if there is one), as seen in the Facebook app (though here it is used to perform actions, not changing views).
Your root view controller should be embedded in a navigation controller. Then push a view controller which contains any number of tab bar items not TabBarController. Then you can present each view controller either push or custom.