I used the following tutorial Red Artisan to create a UISegmentedControl which I use to switch between two views: a simple one and a table view.
Everything is fine when I create a new standalone project, but what I really want is to incorporate this functionality in another project with a UITabBarController as the rootController (the segmented control with two views will be inside the second tab).
In the above tutorial the segmented control, navigation and segment controllers are instantiated and configured from within the application delegate.
Any idea how this could be done from a lower level?
Thank you in advance!
Basically, you need to create a UITTabBarController based application (There are LOTs of tutorials on how to do this), and then in the second UIViewController (or a custom subclass), you would create your UISegmentedControl to switch between two pages.
It sounds like you might also be using a UINavigationController as your base controller in the first application, if this is so..you could have a UITabBarController that has two Controllers in it (two tabs), and the second one will be a UINavigationController like how you had it setup in the app delegate.
Also, there are tutorials to do basically this exact thing all over the internet. Try searching for " UINavigationController inside UITabBarController " or similar. One other thing, there is an example of how the "layering" works in the Apple UI documentation for having a UINavigationController be one of the tabs of a UITabBarController (This is a quite common approach for iPhone apps)
Good luck!
Related
I have an app planned out that needs to have a custom menu throughout the application. Its not a toolbar or anything like that so i don't think a regular UINavigationController or a UITabBarController will do the job.
What would be the best approach to creating this custom menu that appears in all views? I thought of just creating a view with the custom menu and alloc it for each view but it seems like a bit of an overkill. Extending UINavigationController might also be an option, but I'm not sure.
Would love to hear your opinions.
Thank you! :)
Shai.
The UINavigationController and the UITabBarController are pretty much always the best way to go because they have view and memory management built in. Here's what you can do:
Create a subclass of UITabBarController that hides the tab bar. See the last post on this page: http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/iphone-sdk-development/4091-uitabbarcontroller-hidden-uitabbar.html Make this UITabBarController accessible on a singleton object.
Create a view for your menu and some IBActions corresponding to the menu buttons.
When a menu button is pressed, you can manually switch the tabs of the uitabbarcontroller as follows: tabBarController.selectedIndex = x;
I agree with ade. I think a popover controller added to a shared class would fit best to the iOS style (I'd put it in AppDelegate in order to have reference to it from anywhere and to avoid creating multiple instances and using only one which you will keep displaying / hiding whenever you wish to see the menu)
I can think of two options: 1. Subclass UINavigationController, hide the standard UINavigationBar's view and create your own view and put it on top of it (ugly and who knows what the results will end up like). 2. Add the menu as a subview of UIWindow so it stays on top of everything throughout the app.
I think the best way is to create a custom tool bar and use it across the app. Subclassing UINavBar is another option but not recommended by Apple so I would not go there.
I'd look into using a popover style menu such as WEPopover
I am trying to switch between multiple different views using a UISegmentedControl. I found a really good example to do this in:
http://redartisan.com/2010/6/27/uisegmented-control-view-switching-revisited
However, I need to use a UITabbarController in my app. So the navigation controller is not available for me in the app delegate. Is there any other way to switch views in a UITabbarController using UISegmentedControl?
First, consider whether you really want to do this. UITabBarController already gives you the ability to switch views, using the tab bar.
If you really want to do this for some reason, UITabBarController has properties viewControllers and selectedViewController that should allow you to do something like what is described in that article.
In my app I would like to replace the TabBar with a ToolBar under certain conditions, similar to what happens in the Photos App when a user places it in selections mode (A toolbar with share copy, etc, buttons appear over the tab bar). How can I achieve this please?
This can be achieved by creating a new toolbar, assigning it an appropriate frame and adding it to self.tabBarController.view
I'm assuming your root view controller is a UITabBarController. Sometimes using the canned "Root" UIViewControllers is more of a hindrance than a help, especially if you want a highly custom look that does not fit into the paradigm of what the canned controllers offer. There's no reason you have to use them -- you could write your own, and do your own transition between your sub-UIViewController views onto the screen. You can use the UITabBar without the UITabBarController in your own custom UIViewController subclass, then you don't end up fighting the behavior of UITabBarController. Writing your own root ViewController can be very instructive as well -- you learn about all the things a root ViewController must do to manage the sub-ViewControllers.
I am working with developing an iPad application. In that i have to display two table views and one web view in a single view. UISplitViewController allows to add two controller only. Please any one help me.
UISplitViewController cannot be configured to use more than 2 sections. If you want to have this functionality in a view controller, you have to write your own. Matt Gemmell's open-source MGSplitViewController might be a good place to start your coding.
Of course, you can also just add the three views as subviews to a plain UIViewController subclass.
I have been struggling a little with my first real iPhone application and wanted to get some advice on how this should be structured. I am looking for some best practices in terms of creating UI components and linking them together to create the application flow (create views/controllers programmatically vs. with Interface Builder, etc...).
Overview:
I need to show a "Login" view on application start up.
--Show "Signup" view if they click the sign up button.
Once logged in... I have a TabBarController loading 4 views. These 4 views will have to load sub-views (master-detail like).
My question is:
1) What is the best way to piece this navigation structure together? Create each view as a .xib with a corresponding ViewController? How are these glued together?
2) How should I handle the Login/Sign up navigation, no TabBar should be shown on start, but will need it after authenticating the user.
Bonus Point) Are there documented best practices for this kind of stuff? I have been hacking together some workable code, but I got very lost and want to start over doing it the correct way.
I know this may be a little confusing, all and any help is much appreciated.
EDIT: For the Login view on top of the tab bar I used this, pretty simple.
LoginViewController *loginViewController = [[LoginViewController alloc] init];
[loginViewController initWithNibName:#"Login" bundle:nil];
[self.tabBarController presentModalViewController:loginViewController animated:YES];
When you create a new tab bar based application in XCode, you are pretty much already set up the way you would like - there's a main XIB that loads views for each tab from separate XIB files. You have one XIB per tab. Note that as you change types or add tabs you need to specify the proper view controller type in both the XIB with the tab bar, and in the XIB that you use to create your view!
As for the login view, a common approach is to use the tab bar as above, but in the app delegate applicationDidFinishLaunching method present a modal view controller that shows the login screen. The modal controller hides the tab bar and everything else until they are done, then it can be dismissed.
1) What is the best way to piece this navigation structure together? Create each view as a .xib with a corresponding ViewController? How are these glued together?
Use UINavigationController and push your custom views onto the navigation stack as needed. Check out the example Navigation Controller application via Xcode's New Project option to get a feel for how this works.
2) How should I handle the Login/Sign up navigation, no TabBar should be shown on start, but will need it after authenticating the user.
Set up a view for login (I would use a UITableView with one section containing two rows for username and password, but that's my own preference). Set up a second, separate view for sign-up fields (again, I would use a UITableView for this, to keep the layout clean and consistent).
Perhaps use a view animation to pop up the tab bar after successful authentication.
Bonus Point) Are there documented best practices for this kind of stuff? I have been hacking together some workable code, but I got very lost and want to start over doing it the correct way.
You'll end up rewriting your project several times — which is a good thing. Do check out Apple's sample applications (available from the iPhone ADC site) as these contain several "best practice" ways of using several of the UIKit components. As to putting together a larger application, keep your design as simple as possible and reuse as much of Apple's UI components as possible. You can always customize later.
In my opinion, only Cocoa programming examples and very simple applications are suitable for a single nib file. Otherwise you should spread your interface components across multiple nibs. This means each nib is smaller and when loaded into memory will only load those components as necessary. This will improve performance in your application and can help logically organize your program and make it easier to debug when issues arise.
In my tabbar apps I use MainWindow.xib to contain the main window and tabbar but I break up each tab into a seperate nib for the reasons above.
Apple offers the following guidelines:
When creating your nib files, try to keep the following guidelines in mind:
Design your nib files with lazy loading in mind. Plan on loading nib files that contain only those objects you need right away.
In the main nib file for a Mac OS X application, consider storing only the application menu bar and an optional application delegate object in the nib file. Avoid including any windows or user-interface elements that will not be used until after the application has launched. Instead, place those resources in separate nib files and load them as needed after launch.
Store repeated user-interface components (such as document windows) in separate nib files.
For a window or menu that is used only occasionally, store it in a separate nib file. By storing it in a separate nib file, you load the resource into memory only if it is actually used.
For more information you can visit:
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/LoadingResources/CocoaNibs/CocoaNibs.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/10000051i-CH4