add subview and setting frame causing code to lag - iphone

I have the following code:
I am trying to optimize the code, for some reason initWithRootViewController, [self.view addSubview:fullStory.view];,
and setting the frame to the view's superframe is the biggest performance hurdle. Any idea why and how to fix this?
For high res picture here and here.

Hard to say what's going on exactly, but it looks like some "lag" happens when you access the view property of the view controller.
Since this is a lazy loaded property, it calls loadView and then viewDidLoad. Perhaps there is something in those methods that takes a while.
Also, we can't tell if displayStory performs ok because we don't know what it does.

Related

UIImage animations don't work in a view pushed without animation

I've got a view controller whose view contains a UIImageView that does animation:
//AnimationViewController::ViewDidLoad event:
var ctlAnimations = new UIImageView();
ctlAnimations.AnimationImages = list.ToArray(); //<--list contains the UIImages
ctlAnimations.AnimationDuration = 1.0 * list.Count;
ctlAnimations.StartAnimating();
this.Add(ctlAnimations);
This works perfectly: when I push AnimationViewController onto the navigation stack, it displays and animates the UIImage.
But now I need to show AnimationViewController with a custom animated transition:
var transition = CATransition.CreateAnimation ();
transition.Duration = 0.3f;
transition.TimingFunction = CAMediaTimingFunction.FromName(CAMediaTimingFunction.EaseInEaseOut);
transition.Type = CATransition.TransitionFade;
this.View.Layer.AddAnimation (transition, "fade");
//viewController is being pushed with animated=false, because we have a custom animation
base.PushViewController (viewController, false);
this.View.Layer.RemoveAnimation("fade");
This also works perfectly, in that the new View transitions into place using the specified custom animation.
But when I push AnimationViewController onto the stack using an animated transition, it displays but the animation doesn't run. Instead, it shows the first frame of the animation (the first image in the list), and doesn't run it.
So, something about the transition is breaking the ability to animate a UIImage in the new view controller, but I simply can't figure out what to do about it.
Update: I've noticed that if I tap the NavigationController's back button, but then move off of the back button and let go (so I don't actually go back), the animation starts playing!
PushViewController works like this: Over the current view controller the next view controller is placed you can say pushed onto the stack. From Apple docs its clear that either you need to push view controllers either with animation or without.
Work around:
Set the frame of the next view controller's view's x position beyond
the screen's right
Suppose width of the screen is 320, then set the x position of next
view as 320.
Add the next view as subview to the existing one.
Now do your custom animation.
Another work around:(a bit more overhead though)
Take a snapshot programmatically of current view.
Add the snapshot image as the initial view of next view controller.
Now push view controller without animation. (User will still see the old view)
In viewDidAppear of new view controller start your custom animation.
[I have to warn you that this method of taking snapshot might give you a small delay in older devices. Newer devices are pretty fast enough you wont see any lag]
Let me know if any issues in case you are implementing any of these solutions.
Try putting the animating bit in ViewDidAppear rather than ViewDidLoad. Also, try using breakpoints and NSLogs to follow what happens after the animation, starting with the ViewDidLoad and ViewDidAppear. Try having the animation repeat forever so you can see if it has ever been animating or not.
I'm very curious what the culprit is here as well. Why is the animation not displaying correctly in some cases?
My theory is that you have placed animation code in viewWillAppear rather than viewDidAppear. Animation code does not run properly when placed in WILL or SHOULD methods.
Can you please post back what caused the issue?
Suspicion #1
I am betting that your code is not being called because it is in ViewDidLoad. I believe you are creating a customized view stack, that means you need to be using the ChildViewController methods from Cocoa.
I am unfamiliar with MonoTouch (I only write pure CocoaTouch), so this might not be 100% correct
I would be consoling out your viewDidLoad and viewDidAppear methods and absolutely make sure they are being called. It is my suspicion that viewDidLoad IS NOT. And this is causing viewDidLoad to not be called on the UIImageView.
In your code you probably need the equivalent of (from objective-c):
[self addChildViewController:viewController];
// OR?
[base addChildViewController:viewController];
This tells the 'parent' viewController that the Child has been made visible, so call the viewDidLoad/Appear and Unload/Disappear methods when appropriate. This might not exist in MonoTouch, or the Push methods might not be fully implemented, so you might need to do some hacky (bad) stuff like manually calling the viewDidLoad method manually.
Suspicion #2
It could also be that your 'list' variable (the one holding the images) is nil. If that happened the animation would not run. OR maybe it has something to do with the duration of your animation, try to set it to whatever would make it repeat forever. Be sure it isn't running REAL FAST somehow and you are just missing it.
begin philosophical musing
Either that or start learning actual Cocoa development :) Not meant as a flame, but definitely meant seriously, you are going to run into problems trying to develop applications through translation layers (custom language-bridges meant to get around writing the base language of a framework/application/platform).
Titanium/MonoTouch/PhoneGap will never produce as robust or high-quality applications as real Objective-C. And besides that, once you learn Cocoa it will change how you write everything else, and I doubt you will want to go back. As the wonderful website of the same name says, 'Cocoa is my girlfriend'
Let me tell the something about UI in IOS. In IOS access to the UI Elements is limited to a single thread.
The single thread would always be the mainThread except in the case when you are running an animation.
Hence when u are performing number of animation at the same instance you have to use
beginAnimation.
setFrame (or) some methods that changes state of UI element.
Repeat step2 for all those objects u are scheduling to animate.
comitAnimations to perform all animations at once. (using comit animations ensure all the animations are performed on same thread)
So, I guess here is what happening in ur case.
Viewcontroller started an animation to push the view controller into stack.
Image view started another animation before finishing first animation.
Look at the links to get a clear idea link1 and link2.
Well Let's get into the solution
Add an ivar and retained property named ctlAnimations to your class
In ViewDidLoad (or) ViewDidAppear
self.ctlAnimations = new UIImageView();
ctlAnimations.image=(UIImage*)[list.toArray() objectAtIndex:0];
this.Add(ctlAnimations);
[self performSelector:#selector(startAnimatingImage) afterDelay:0.1];
Create a private method named startAnimatingImage with below code
self.ctlAnimations.AnimationImages = list.ToArray();
ctlAnimations.AnimationDuration = 1.0 * list.Count;
ctlAnimations.StartAnimating();
On a brief we just shown first image for a moment when the firstanimation is taken place and then we delayed animation start for 1 second so that it performs after first animation and then starts animating the image.
Go ahead and give it a try
There is the concept for the Main thread. So UIAnimation are actually works on Main Thread and at the same time may be this was happen that another task is performing on the same Main Thread.So that was a case like IOS will give preference according to processes id of each process at a time and for the solution you need to make background thread for the same operations.
Well, I never figured out what the problem was here, but it also turned out that there was some sort of memory leak in UIImage such that on some phones my code was crashing.
So I rewrote it to do the animation manually. Now I set a timer and keep a frame index variable, and every time the timer rings I change the image myself. This amounts to the same thing, and it turns out it fixes this problem.

How can I optimize my controllers so they load faster?

Most of the iOS apps I use are very responsive, when I tap on an element it goes to the next view right away. In my app, some of my view controllers take 0.5-1.0 second to load.
My code is all in the viewDidLoad method and I'm pretty sure that's the problem but I can't move anything out since I need every single element that I instantiate.
A solution I thought is to move all the work I do in viewDidLoad in a thread then call the main thread when I'm ready to call addSubview, would that work even if UIKit is not thread safe? Or is there something else I'm missing?
Try to move some code you might have in viewDidLoad to viewdidAppear. viewDidAppear is being called once the view is presented. If you have to make some hard work, do it there and maybe show aa spinner somewhere while you do that.
What are you exactly doing in viewDidLoad? Btw remember that a view is only loaded when you need it, if you want to switch between views faster I can suggest you to create an initializion phase where you call -view on all the view controller you want to show, maybe helped with a spinner or a progress bar. but pay attention this would work only with intensive loading task and not memory consuming tasks. It sounds very strange your request, so is better the you try to explain better why your viewDidLoad is so slow, maybe there is something wrong.
Define your UI elements in Xcode as part of designing the interface. That way, Xcode can compile your storeyboard or xib files into the rapidly loading binary form.

Poor animation performance transitioning to UIViewController (via UINavigationController) and not sure why

I have a simple UIViewController whose view is created via a Nib. Here's the structure of the Nib:
And a screenshot of the layout:
Whatever the previous view (there are 2 possibilities), there is significant stutter/lag when transitioning to this view. Even the keyboard animation is lagged. Also, this is only on an actual device.
I've tried removing the MKMapView to see if that was the case, but it didn't make a difference.
Is the Nib too complex? Should I load everything via code? I'm not sure what it could be, but its really annoying, especially when the rest of the app is super crisp.
As far as code goes, its nothing special: just alloc/init a view, push it onto a UINavigationController, etc. Nothing in the viewWillAppear:/viewWillDisappear:.
Coming from Reddit, where you posted code (probably want to do that here too):
My guess would be the lag is coming from the section from line 44 through 80ish, where you build the overlay. Something in there might be taking longer than you think (Spotpoint unSerialize sounds fishy). You typically want to do as little work as possible in viewDidLoad, since that is called as the UI is transitioning to the new view controller.
Try throwing that code into a GCD queue or running it in the background, and see if that helps the loading stutter.

iPhone: how to load objects *after* the main viewcontroller has appeared

Ok hopefully this is an easy question:
I have a main viewcontroller that is loaded by the app delegate at application startup.
This viewcontroller has some code in 'viewDidLoad' to create some non view type based objects (some sound/data objects). Aside from that it also loads a UIView.
The sound/data objects take a while to create, but the app is quite functional without them for a start - so I want to load these objects after the UIView has loaded, but can't seem to figure out how.
I have tried moving the appropriate code to viewDidAppear, but this is still called before the UIView actually appears on screen. Is there a function that is called after the viewcontroller actually starts displaying UIViews, or any other way to achieve what I want?
Any help would be much appreciated - thanks!
In case anyone else has a similar problem, I found a way to solve it: use NSThread to load things in the background without pausing everything else.
There's a good simple example here: http://www.iphoneexamples.com/.

iPhone UIViews sleeping/dying after being brought back into view

I need some help. This seems to be a common problem I am having when am adding and changing views in my coding. And I would love to learn what I am doing wrong.
Currently I am adding and removing views using the following calls from my view controller:
[startView removeFromSuperview];
[self addSubview:secondView];
and then doing the opposite again to go back.
[secondView removeFromSuperview];
[self addSubview:startView];
I am fine up to this point.
But the problem I have is that when I then decide to go back to 'startView" and call the first code that I have above for the second time.
My View loads but very little works.
None of my methods are called, there is no animation and the view is shown but it is "dead" or "asleep". And I have no idea why!
I am basically adding a view, removing it, then adding it again and everything breaks.
Can anyone give me a hand as to what might be happening? is it that ViewDidLoad doesn't fire the second time it's loaded? or something like that?
I would much appreciate it.
I may have figured it out So don't worry!
I had a flag hidden in my code somewhere that was stopping my methods from firing.
Sorry!