I want my view controller to display different views based on a condition that depends on some runtime checks (lets say a uiwebview at even hours and a form on odd hours).
What is the best pattern to achieve it in iphone project? Maybe I can hide controls based on aforementioned condition or maybe it is better to load different views?
or maybe i should load different view controllers and make the check in my parent view controller?
The iPhone UI is so small and crowded that you are usually better off creating a different view/view-controller pair for different UIs. Hiding UI elements leaves gaps that are very noticeable and manually rearranging the UI elements on the fly is a pain.
More importantly, different views communicate to the user that the app is in a different state. You don't want the app to switch to a different state without informing the user. It's hard enough for them to understand what is going on without confusing them with UI slight of hand.
It is very bad UI design to have the same user action present a different UI for no reason discernible to the user. For example, presenting a "a uiwebview at even hours and a form on odd hours" would be a fantastically bad idea because the user would have no idea why clicking on a specific button sometimes gets them a web view and a form view other times. Do you expect the user to check the clock before clicking so that they know what to expect?
If some UI element is unavailable for some reason e.g. no network access, then it's better UI design to present the element as disabled instead of disappearing it. The interface grammar teaches users that grayed out controls are temporarily unavailable. That is much less confusing that a constantly changing UI.
Related
I'm building an iPhone app (in iOS 5) with several different views, one of which contains a map (also has separate view controller). The first time I go over to this view, it takes a while for it to load, and things such as animating pin drops also don't work well as a result of it. Not to mention that it takes a bit for the location to stabilize.
What I want to know is if there's a way to load MKMapView before a user goes to that view, so by the time they get there, these issues aren't present anymore.
I've already seen this and this question but they haven't been very helpful. Keep in mind that I don't really need to interact with that view before I get there, I just want it to be fully loaded by the time I go there.
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.
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.
1) I want to create a List by touch and dragging icons from a Master List.
2) Also have the ability to Delete items in this newly created List or Rearrange their order.
Is there some code sample one could look at or possible design pointers on cleanly accomplish this functionality.
I realize UITableView could accomplish this. But doing it visually in a single screenful is intuitive as it maintains the overall context of the task at hand.
Thanks
None of the API UI classes will let you do this. Both tableviews and scrollviews want the entire screen. You're going to have to write a lot of stuff from scratch.
I think you will find that a dual list design is a poor interface choice. You really don't have room on an iPhone screen to display and manipulate two list within the same view. Remember as well that you won't be able to see all of both list if they run off the screen (which is likely.)
"Intuitive" is just marketing speak for "familiar". There is nothing intuitive about a nonstandard interface. Since iPhone users don't routinely drag items between list it will not be readily apparent to them how to work the interface. You will most likely be better off with a single master table in which users can check individual cells to be added to a sub list. This is a common interface on the iPhone and therefore more "intuitive".
Before spending a lot of time on this, I suggest you do a mockup that will display on the device itself. You can simply draw mock interface in a graphics program and then display it as an image in an imageview. This will let you test if you can display enough information in dual list to be useful and whether you can hit elements in both list reliably.
I'm making an application for the iPhone. Essentially it'll be a guide of sorts, and all the generated information will be in one long window. Each block of information can have a 'link' in it to generate another block of connected information (for example a block about Wallace could link to a block about Gromit) that would appear at the top.
For example, at the start 1 block of data:
Wallace: Owner of Gromit
would become 2 blocks (on clicking Gromit):
Gromit: Wallace's Dog
Wallace:Owner of Gromit
Each block would also have the ability to be added to favorites list by clicking an icon. The text would need to be laid out with HTML and each block may be of a different length. A search on a different could also add a block to the top.
I'm OK with objects in 'easy' languages like PHP, but am basically new to iPhone and Cocoa, and I want to start off with the right approach here. A Table and cells looks like the correct approach, but is there any advantage of doing it as a long list (like I might do on a web version) or are there any restrictions in the way cells can hold/layout information that will cause me trouble down the line.
I believe this approach is popular for dictionaries.
I'm committed to doing it the way with a single scroll for a couple of reasons. The main one is that I want the user to be able to scroll instantly back to entries they've looked at before. i.e. the single view essentially represents a history of the data they've looked at. (if it's a lot stuff can drop off the end). Each entry will be very short but there will be a lot in total. So if the user has looked at
Wallace
Gromit
The Wrong Trousers
Cheese
Penguin
And they are not looking at Wallace, a quick half second scroll takes them back to 'penguin'.
Hierarchy is the way to go on the iPhone.
Remember that the iPhone has a small screen and that users can only see a very small amount of information at anyone time. (One interface expert compared it to driving while peering down a two inch pipe with one eye.) Users can easily get lost scrolling up and down a very long list even if it has index. (That's assuming your information can be easily indexed in a form that users will instantly recognize.) It's usually easier for users to click through several views with the data in each view getting more and more specific with each level. In addition, so many apps use this hierarchal system that your users will be used to it and expect it.
System wise, its easier for the iPhone to display just one level of hierarchy at a time so your app feels more responsive. The hardware doesn't to maintain all the data in memory but just the data it needs to immediately display.
If I understand you data model correctly, you would be best off with a hierarchy of two tables and a detail view. The first table would have an list of letters A-Z. The second table would be list of all records starting with that letter. The third would be a detail view showing links to that record. So, to see the example in the OP, a user would select W-->Wallace-->(Detail) Gromit.
Edit01:
I think you should do a test scroll of either a very long web page or UIScrollView and see how it affects performance and usability. I would caution you that layouts that seem perfectly usable and fast on laptop or desktop hardware become unusable and slow on mobiles with their weaker processors and much smaller screens. It's much more difficult to do " a quick half second scroll" back to a specific point on a long page on a mobile than on a larger screen.
You do have the option of creating a outline-like table view that inserts new indented cells as needed. I still think hierarchy is the quickest and most usable layout on a mobile.