I am new to IPhone/iPad development and have a application design question.
1) I have about 60 different pages I converting from a Flash file. They are largely pretty devoid of stuff to do. Mainly reading and and some images.
2) There are a few interactive things (buttons, animations,etc.) on on about 50% of the pages
My initial thinking is to use a navigation controller (hidden, as I don't want as part of my design) to use the push and pop functionality. Each page would have it's own viewcontroller.
My other thought was to use hidden UINavigationController, but to group pages in specific areas and have multiple NIB files read from one view controller.
Is one better that the other? Or have more advantages than the other? Or is there a better way?
Not sure how to answer this, but you could probably have a few NIBs and ViewControllers and reuse them. There are a million ways to do simple navigation without UINavigationController -- it might be more of a pain that not using it.
For example, is navigation always like a tree (forward, forward, forward, back, back, back) --- or could it be more free form around a graph?
If navigation is simply push and pop, then use it, but try to keep the number of different viewcontrollers/NIBs to a minimum (for maintenance purposes)
The usual recommendation is one view controller per full page of content. However, if your content is remarkably similar, reusing the view controller is valid. Before proceeding, I'd think carefully about your navigation model:
Will users be able to jump from any page to another (say like a magazine)?
Do some pages require the user to visit other pages first?
For (2), the push/pop model works quite well, whereas for (1) the push/pop model of a UINavigationController may be too much trouble.
So focus on your presentation, and then let the code follow from that.
Related
Having used storyboards for a while now I have found them extremely useful however, they do have some limitations or at least unnatural ways of doing things. While it seems like a single storyboard should be used for your app, when you get to even a moderately sized application this presents several problems.
Working within teams is made more difficult as conflicts in Storyboards can be problematic to resolve (any tips with this would also be welcome)
The storyboard itself can become quite cluttered and unmanageable.
So my question is what are the best practices of use?
I have considered using a hybrid approach having logical tasks being split into separate storyboards, however this results in the UX flow being split between the code and the storyboard. To me this feels like the best way to create reusable actions such as login actions etc.
Also should I still consider a place for Xibs? This article has quite a good overview of many of the issues and it proposes that for scenes that only have one screen, xibs should be used in this case. Again this feels unusual to me with Apples support for instantiating unconnected scenes from a storyboard it would suggest that xibs won't have a place in the future but I could be wrong.
You are correct, breaking up the storyboards is the best way to go. Decomposition does more than just make parts of the UI more reusable. It also makes using storyboards in a team more manageable.
Lately, many of my storyboards have contained four or less scenes. It is easy enough for one person to solely build and maintain one or more of such UI modules. This practice reduces or eliminates merge conflicts.
In the case I do need something changed in a storyboard owned by someone else, I ask the owner first if he or she has any local changes. If so, I sometimes have the owner add the changes for me. Decomposition still requires some coordination, but it is substantially less than a full-app storyboard. Ever since I started this practice, I haven't had any merge difficulties.
As for XIBs, I don't think I wrote enough about them in my article. They are still very useful. They can be nice for single view controllers. However, this is not where they truly shine. XIBs have one advantage that storyboards may never have. The most basic unit of a XIB is a UIView, whereas the basic unit of a storyboard is a UIViewController. Since XIBs can hold collections of UIViews, they are great for visually creating custom controls. In a XIB, I can visually build a rotary dial or a GPS widget. Then I can drop these controls and widgets into storyboards or other XIBs. Such XIBs are seen more often in iPad apps since they have larger screens capable of holding many controls and widgets. It would be unnatural to build a UISwitch within in a UIViewController in a storyboard.
Now for the best news. It is possible to connect storyboards within Interface Builder and without writing any code. I was planning on releasing this technique after WWDC, since Apple may release similar functionality in iOS 6. However, since you asked, I decided to release it now. Rather than duplicate my explanations on how RBStoryboardLink works, you can find more details on my blog and on GitHub. This will make your UIStoryboard experiences much more enjoyable.
I found this article mentioned a lot of issues when using StoryBoard, one thing the author raised is using a huge of nib files in one StoryBoard, which I agreed he shouldn't do that, but there was other issues such as:
My root view controller has become a source view controller for lot of
segues and therefore its prepareForSegue: has become a stupidly large
method filled with a lot of “if (segue.identifier
isEqualToString:#”…”)” statements in a row
and
It is possible to assign view controllers in a storyboard an
identifier. Unfortunately this identifier property is not exposed in
the UIViewController class. This makes it very hard to perform safe
introspection of the view controller hierarchy at runtime. It would be
really nice if identifier was exposed for view controllers as well as
for segues.
and ...more other issues, I thought it does make sense, and I'm worry whether should or shouldn't use StoryBoard for now ??
I'm creating a series of "book-like" apps and am trying to setup a template of sorts to be used across the series. I've decided against the UINavigationController approach, as it would seem to be too memory-intensive to have an accumulating stack of all pages and their assets.
I'm thinking of a simple RootViewController that manages the loading/destroying of Previous, Current and Next views. Does anyone know of a good template or example to start from for this basic skeleton? Preferably one with clear MVC separation?
There is a good example app "PageControl" by Apple which demonstrates this approach with the UIScrollView. I've used that code successfully in a project. I think it should be easy to adapt that way of handling the three views for a custom controller.
My Approach:
You could use the three controller (previousPageController,currentPageController,NextPageController) with UINavigationController rather then (As you said) having an accumulating stack of all pages and their assets,
If you have single controller like RootViewController for showing pages through three different views,Although you could go with this approach but you will end up having thousand like of code (could be :)) and that will require more maintenance, So It's better to have three different files responsible for pages rather then One.....
Thanks
this is a very noobie question although I have had quite a bit of experience iphone development.
I have a client who wants an app with various screnns, but does not want to use built in iphone navigation, but instead wants to have buttons on the screens. All I can find is a load of 14 year olds giving tutorials on MVC or using different views in the same nib.
Does anybody know what apples suggested way of doing this is as I can imagine it been a mind field.
Many thanks
Maybe you should have followed the MVC tutorials of the 14 year old guys.
Then you would know that you could use the built in iphone navigation controllers (ie UITabBarController, UINavigationController) without their standard view counterparts (ie UITabBar, UINavigationBar).
You could always just draw buttons on the screen in interface builder and use custom images for the normal/highlighted states.
When the button is pressed it's up to you what you'd like to do with the received buttonclick method being invoked... the usual way is with the standard navigation system which can optionally have a navigation bar at the top with (back) button, title, etc... and you push/pop viewcontrollers in a hierarchical way. You can just turn the title (or change for your own style) but it does enforce a hierarchical structure.
If you don't want hierarchical navigation of your screens you can either do this with your own custom navigation controller than handles which viewcontroller is currently visible or you could use a thirdparty component like three60 which allows you to navigate around like a webbrowser does on webpages.
You may also want to take a look at Corona which is more for games but would allow you to do a totally custom interface with all sorts of custom transitions and just needs you to write lua... that said it will limit you on using their engine with this approach as you can't get to the ObjC level.
Finally one last approach is simply to use webview and pick up the clicked links so you design your app via webpages... rather ugly approach but can work well if you're very familiar with HTML.
This is Cocoa Touch (et al), iPhone, XCode only.
After completing my first commercial iPhone app, I'm struggling a bit to find a way to start and expand an app from scratch which gives the most linear development (i.e., the least scrapping, re-write or re-organization of code, classes and resources) as app specs change and I learn more (mostly about what Cocoa Touch and other classes and components are designed to be capable of and the limitation of their customization).
So. File, New Project. Blank window based app? Create the controllers I need, with .xib if necessary, so I can localize them and do changes requested by the customer in IB? And then always subclass each class except those extremely unlikely to be customized? (I mean framework classes such as UIButton, CLLocation etc here.)
The question is a generic 'approach' type question, so I'll be happy to listen to handy dev practices you've found paid off. Do you have any tips for which 're-usable components' you've found have become very useful in subsequent projects?
Clients often describe programs in terms of 'first, this screen appears, and then you can click this button and on the new screen you can select... (and so on)' terms. Are there any good guides to go from there to vital early-stage app construction choices, i.e. 'functions-features-visuals description to open-ended-app-architecture'?
For example, in my app I went from NavBar, to Toolbar with items, to Toolbar with two custom subviews in order to accommodate the functions-features-visuals description. Maybe you have also done such a thing and have some advice to offer?
I'm also looking for open-ended approaches to sharing large ("loaded data") objects, or even simple booleans, between controllers and invoking methods in another controller, specifically starting processes such as animation and loading (example: trigger a load from a URL in the second tab viewcontroller after making sure an animation has been started in the first tab viewcontroller), as these two features apply to the app architecture building approach you advocate.
Any handy pointers appreciated. Thanks guys.
Closing this up as there's no single correct answer and was more suitable for the other forum, had I known it existed when I asked :)
If you want to know the method I ended up with, it's basically this:
Window-based blank app
Navigation Controller controls all, whether I need to or not (hide when not used)
Tab Bar Controller if necessary
Connect everything <-- unhelpful, I know.
Set up and check autorotation, it might get added to some view later.
Add one viewcontroller with xib for each view, you never know when they want an extra button somewhere. It's easier to copy code than make the max ultra superdynamic adjustable tableviewcontroller that does all list-navigation, etc.
Re-use a viewcontroller only when just the content differs in it, such as a detail viewcontroller.
Minimize code in each viewcontroller by writing functions and methods and shove them in a shared .m
Everything that's shared ends up in the App delegate, except subclassed stuff.
Modal viewcontrollers are always dynamically created and never have an xib.
The Apple UI design guide suggests that a UIPageControl is ideal for presenting the top view of a utility app.
Would a paging view that appears at the 2nd or 3rd level down inside the main UINavigationController view trigger a fail during the App review process?
In my App I have inserted a 3 page view at the second navigation level down in my productivity style app. Each page presents a question and requires an answer that might by a multichoice tick or text box entry. The questions could be stacked vertically in a multi-section table but in my prototype flicking through the questions horizontally feels very natural.
However I have not seen an App store program that uses paging as I have.
I asked Apple a similar question recently and got back:
"Thank you for contacting the iPhone Developer Program. Apple is not able to provide pre-approval to developers for proposed application submissions."
In the end it really depends on the reviewer, the specifics of your app, full moon, etc.
Personally, I would simply try it. If the interface looks good and you think it will not confuse users, then just submit it.
Also, being rejected for stuff like that is not the end of the world. You just have to replace it with something similar. Happened to me once or twice. It is usually not a complete blocker.
Although you will probably not fail app review, I believe using a UIPageControl may be confusing to your users. As you pointed out, I can't think of any apps using the UIPageControl in this manner. The following quote from the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines is informative:
A page indicator gives users a quick
way to see how many views are open and
an indication of the order in which
they were opened; it does not help
users keep track of the steps they
took through a hierarchy of views.
Because the views in a utility
application tend to be peers of each
other, a page indicator is sufficient
to help users navigate through them. A
productivity application that displays
hierarchical information, on the other
hand, should offer navigation through
the elements in the navigation bar
(for more on this, see “Navigation
Bars”).
From your description of how this portion of your app is supposed to display, it doesn't sound like these pages with questions on them would be considered 'multiple views'. In addition, you probably want your users to answer each question sequentially and move on to the next. The UIPageControl is designed so that a user can switch between any of the views in any order they choose, not only in one direction.
This sounds much more like a hierarchical design, and this portion of your app would probably work a lot better if you used a navigation bar along with a UITableView. Requiring your users to answer a question by tapping a multichoice tick box, and then make them figure out that they need to swipe in a certain direction to get to the next question would not be obvious to a user, and could be much more intuitive. For example, as soon as the user selects a tick box, you could just programmatically navigate to the next question. Or, have a button at the bottom of each screen that's labelled "Next Question", which would transition to the next screen.
Hope this helps!