I am looking for some clarification with regards to view controllers and views. Should one view controller be used exclusively to control one view?
Basically, my portrait view is going to be a 4x3 grid of buttons (within a scrollview). When i rotate the view to landscape, i am going to want maybe a 6x4 grid.
Obviously the functionality for handling the buttons' clicks etc will be the same in either orientation, so it would seem a lot of effort to duplicate this for landscape.
How should i get the view controller to use the correct view xib?
Should i have two seperate xibs? I have tried every combination of autoresize masks and not having much luck.
I'm not sure of the correct way to go.
Thanks.
i do not think that the above one answered the question of joec. joec want to know, if it is bad or good to have 2 nibs (i.e. landscape.nib and portrait.nib) and manage the views in that 2 nibs with 1 uiviewcontroller.
my understanding of the mvc design pattern is, that a ViewController really SHOULD manage different views. but when i look at the internet, in cause of cocoa touch, often people says that it is BAD (whatever this means) when a UIViewController switches his view-property at runtime. thats confusing to me. why should a viewcontroller not be able to switch views ? why should i build some strange "master"-viewcontroller, which manages 2 other viewcontrollers, and everyone of this manages his own view. in case of landscape and portrait abstraction (or i.e. iphone-gui and ipad-gui abstraction) the code in the gui-business-layer (the event-code etc. in the viewcontroller) is exactly the same for different views. the style of the views is not. so that should one of the benefits of a mvc-implementation.
sorry, but that seems not logical for me, apple.
any thoughts ?
edit says:
it seems that apple provides some strange sort of workaround to solve this problem (hate me, but for me it is nothing more than that, because i see no really straight-forward design implementation for managing and handling views in the UIViewController class):
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/ViewControllerPGforiPhoneOS/BasicViewControllers/BasicViewControllers.html%23//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007457-CH101-SW26
i found this link in the following stack overflow thread:
Want to use muliple nibs for different iphone interface orientations
thanks to Michal for that one.
You can also try to change your views and subviews sizes etc.
Take a look here Madhup expained It before. Changing UIView on orientation change
Related
Okay so I know that you can embed a ViewController inside a view. But the situation I have is a little different
I have an app which is using an external monitor. When the monitor is connected, I'd like to display the ExternalMonitor ViewController inside another view on my iPad screen. Like a Live Preview. I can't work out how to get it to display the ViewController on both my ExternalMonitor and my PreviewView at the same time.
Basically:
1 ViewController displayed in 2 places at the same time, scaled to fit the two different views.
Is this possible. Can someone point me in the right direction?
I apologise if my terminology isn't right. I am quite new to Xcode and swift.
While someone might offer a better solution to this, you might try displaying 2 instances of the same view controller class in 2 different places. It won't work of course, if this controller should respond to user actions. They will not be in sync that way.
You can use a common UIView in multiple view controllers for e.g we do use in making common headers and footers , but according to my point of view this is not possible to use 2 instances of a view controller at the same time . It will got clashed , may be it will work sequencely one after another but not on same time.
I am working on an e-commerce based app, and the designer has passed on the mockup to me. !
This is the mockup the designer has passed.
I am working on storyboard of this mockup and I have managed to get to this level as of now.
There are several views and features which cannot be included in this storyboard now because of the limited space. I know the designer has passed on me the rendered view, which can be seen on scrolling the app.
I wonder which could be the best approach to include all these views in a single storyboard or render them in a single view.
I have looked onto using xib files and calling them from my viewcontroller class, which could be a possible solution. But, I want to know, what could be the best solution?
Best solution is use Storyboard so that you have all screens at one place. But keep one thing in mind that start doing the whole project in XCODE 8 storyboard (Because XCODE 7 and 8 storyboards are not fully compatible with each other). So that you get compatibility with previous iOS versions also (< iOS 10)
Now as far as design is concerned, I would like to suggest you use autolayouts and proportional layout.
your View controller will always have self.view. Start on that view. First add navigation controller (with root view controller as your first prefered view controller on app start) or simply add one toolbar. Then add one UIScrollView to whole remaining space. Then start with your design inside UIScrollView. Don't forget to provide contentSize of UIScrollView.
For any help, feel free to ask.
The best solution would be using a tableView with multiple prototype cells for this kind of problem. Well, going through the concept as mentioned, I could easily scroll in the storyboard and maintain my design as per the mockup.
I wanna put "tabs" at the top of the view and I don't find in object library... does anyone knows? Thanks for the help.
Examples here:
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img829/1808/47bw.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img822/7048/oaum.jpg
There's a difference between navigational tabs like the second screen shot has and just a "tabbed" division of information like the first. The first one stays a single screen while the second one could also be considered an application that has different subviews under that tabbed navigation. The first screen is trivial and you should do this with UIViews with UILabels nested into them.
The second screen is more interesting. I don't think it's a good idea to use the built in tabbed navigation handlers because it's just not a good fit for that kind of layout. You could do it but you're writing a lot of code to get it completely like you want it. But if you would want to you could divide the screen with custom containers and trigger segues in the bottom part from the UIButtons you put on top and it's a pretty good way to handle those kind of segues from within Interface Builder.
More information:
http://sandmoose.com/post/35714028270/storyboards-with-custom-container-view-controllers
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/featuredarticles/ViewControllerPGforiPhoneOS/CreatingCustomContainerViewControllers/CreatingCustomContainerViewControllers.html
I am pretty new to IOS but have completed a couple of simple apps.
I have read a number of books, which have helped me getting started, but I am missing som more generel advice on how to best structure an app - especially with regards to UI.
I know this is a very general question, so I will try to put up a specific problem. Suggestions on how to structure this particular app .. or pointers on good reads regarding similar topics would be highly appreciated.
Now the UI of this particular iPad App will look as follows:
The main screen is divided horisontally in two.
Upper two thirds is a sort of canvas / work space
Lower third is a toolbox with various items, which can be dragged to the work space.
The toolbox has different views which holds items in various categories. Lets say: One view with various geometric figures and one wiew with various colors. The user can choose which category to show in the toolbox.
Finally at the top of the screen is a toolbar with a single button.
I am a bit confused as to how to structure my views / ViewControllers. Maybe a lot of my trouble stems from me not fully understanding Apples guideline as to how to use various UI Elements - please feel free to say so if this is the case.
This is how I would start out.
I would construct a main ViewController controlling a main view. The main view would hold the upper toolbar. To this view I would add two subviews. One for the work space and one for the toolbox. The toolbox view confuses me a bit. My idea is making this a tabbed view with one tab for each category of items. However as I understand it, it is bound to cause lots of trouble nesting viewcontrollers which would be the case. Does this imply that using a tabviewcontroller to control only part of the screen is against guidelines? Would it be much better to make up my own 'tabbar' and simply switch between subviews when a tab is tabbed?
Does this also imply, that having a popup view, covering only part of the screen, with a navigationcontroller is equally bad practice? Or would this have to be a modal view? And how about a tableviewcontroller with a view taking up only part of the screen? I fail to see how to accomplish these things without effectively nesting viewcontrollers.
I am sure I got something completely upside down?
Best regards
Thomas
Nesting ViewControllers is not a problem. In fact, View Controller Containment was introduced in iOS 5 to make this even easier. However, it was still possible before the new containment functions.
The easiest way to nest two ViewControllers is the following:
SubViewController *theSubView = [[SubViewController alloc] init];
[self.view addSubview:theSubView.view];
The subview will then be controlled by the SubViewController and will be "nested" in the main ViewController. (This code would be part of the main ViewController.)
To use the new(er) View Controller Containment methods you will make the SubViewController a childViewController of the main ViewController.
There is an excellent video from WWDC 2011 that goes over View Controller Containment. You will need to be a developer to access it here. It is called "Implementing UIViewController Containment."
I would not advise to use the TabBarController in a nested format, it would be easier for you to just build your own view switching method or even use a UIScrollView with pagingEnabled.
As far as popup views with NavigationControllers, this is a common practice. There is nothing wrong with creating a popup with a NavigationController inside of it for doing something like, accessing app settings, or configuring a tool from you palette, or accessing saved projects, whatever you can imagine.
I hope this gets you off to a good start.
I've been looking for a great pattern to deal with the orientations on the iPad without any luck. I know that there are already a lot of topics about this on stackoverflow but no one is really great so don't waste your time adding this topic as a duplicate.
As any iPad application, you have to deal with (at least) 2 orientations (landscape and portrait).
How are you dealing with this ?
Do you use two different ViewController ?
Do you use the willRotateToInterfaceOrientation:duration methods ?
How do you avoid duplicate code ?
Thanks
You won't find a single pattern because the best method varies depending on the needs of each particular app.
If the views are simple, then rotating the view's elements takes little code. If the views are complex and/or the elements change between orientations, then I would recommend using two view controllers.
You can avoid duplicate code in multiple controllers by creating a super class for the controllers that contains all the shared functionality. If you use nibs, you will often find you need only change the nib file for each subclass.