iPhone autorotation only on specific screens in under a navigation controller - iphone

This is just an example of the basic problem I'm having, so don't worry if this situation sounds a bit pointless ;)
Let's say I have an app that's mainly a UINavigationController just two levels deep. The top level is a table with a list of image filenames, and the second level has just a UIImageView showing the image for the filename you tapped.
For an app such as this, does anyone know a good way to allow the table at the top level to autorotate while keeping the second level of images fixed in portrait mode?
So far I've been able to almost get there... but when I tap a filename while in landscape mode, the image slides into view in the wrong orientation even if the second level view controller's shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation returns yes for only portrait modes.

There was no good way to do this in iPhone OS 2.x, but in 3.0, they've dramatically improved it.
In 2.x, the shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation: delegate method was only obeyed for changes to the orientation, so you'd get the behavior you describe: if it was rotated in another view controller, it would stay rotated through pushes and pops even if the new view controller didn't support rotation to that orientation.
In 3.0, UINavigationController polls shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation: on each push or pop and obeys what it returns the way you'd expect, e.g.: if you're currently rotated in Landscape Left orientation, and you push an instance of a view controller that only supports Portrait orientation via shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:, it automatically and instantly flips the logical orientation and slides in the new view the correct way in Portrait orientation.
Note that this will only work on applications linked against (and therefore requiring) 3.0. For applications linked against 2.x, it will emulate the old behavior.

The problem is that if you use auto rotation the entire UI (including the UIWindow instance I believe) is rotated.
Anything pushed onto the navigation controller at this point will be done in landscape.
So when you push the imageview, that is exactly what you get.
To get this to work, you have to either:
Handle the rotation of the root view
manually (using a transform)
Unrotate the image view by -PI/2
using a transform.
Either way you have to perform the transforms manually to get this to work.
As a side note, this may be bad UI design. As a user, I would expect as I drill down for images to appear rightside up. But this is without knowing the exact context of your app.

Related

How can I manually rotate the keyboard (With animation)?

I have a controller that manages a UITextView. Normally, in an app that supports multiple interface orientations, I would simply override -shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:, set the appropriate auto-resizing masks, and go along my merry way. While going along my merry way, if I were to begin editing this UITextField in, say, portrait mode, then rotate the device to a landscape orientation, the keyboard would animate nicely to landscape mode along with the rest of the view. This is what I want.
Now, in this particular app, I have a root view that must only ever be in portrait mode. This is a camera preview view. I also have an overlay-view for the camera-view that I would like to have support all interface orientations. This is where the UITextView is located.
So, as a result of the fixed-orientation root view, I cannot use built in rotation: I have to do this manually. This isn't a problem, I can register for the UIDeviceOrientationDidChangeNotification and manually animate the appropriate rotation and frame adjustment for the overlay view.
That's good enough to get the view positioned correctly, but the keyboard would still only ever show in portrait orientation. Again, I can correct this with UIApplication's -setStatusBarOrientation: every time I get a notification that the device has rotated.
But that's where the problem arises. I would hope that the combination of:
Register for rotation notifications
Manually rotate view
Set status bar orientation (with animation)
would be enough to exactly replicate the automatic rotation behavior. But it falls short in one important way: If the keyboard were to be shown in one orientation, then rotated to another, the keyboard would remain defiantly in the original position, as if -setStatusBarOrientation: were never called. As far as I know, the only thing that affects the keyboard's presentation is the application's status bar orientation, and there is only the one method for setting it. So am I out of luck? Is it really impossible to make the keyboard rotate with a view manually like it does with auto-rotation?
Addendum
In an effort to avoid covering old ground, I've tried the following solutions hacks:
Upon orientation change, resign and immediately become first responder again. This does make the keyboard move to the appropriate orientation, but it does so without animation, and occasionally does really bad things like show a landscape-sized keyboard in portrait and vice-versa.
Upon orientation change just resign first responder. This also has the odd behavior of instantly moving (but not resizing) the keyboard to the new orientation, then dismissing it with animation. It's very ugly and jarring.
One of our apps does this (because we didn't say "no!" loudly enough when presented with the original design) using crazy "orientation stack" code. I remember fixing this problem by disabling orientation when the keyboard is up (ickyyyy).
Instead, consider supporting rotation by "counter-rotating" the camera preview view instead of forcing the VC to portrait-only. If this looks a bit odd, you can do the "nasty hack" version: Add the camera preview view as a subview of the window, under your VC's view, and give your VC's view a transparent background.
Maybe late to the party. I stumbled upon the same problem. Trying to fix it in iOS 6.
Apparently Apple didn't recognize this problem in the meanwhile, otherwise they would've fixed it by now: have the -setStatusBarOrientation: method include other interface elements besides only the status bar as well, or have alternative methods to set the orientation of the keyboard and other elements. A pity they didn't
Disabling orientation rotation when the keyboard is up, is no solution for me, but I found another simple solution hack:
return NO in -(BOOL)shouldAutorotate
return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskAll in -(NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations
listen for device rotation notifications
Then when you receive such notification:
hide the status bar
when the keyboard is up, dismiss the keyboard ([myTextField resignFirstResponder])
perform manual rotation animation
set the orientation of the statusbar ([sharedApplication setStatusBarOrientation:newOrientation animated:NO])
show the status bar
if the keyboard was visible before, present it again ([myTextField becomeFirstResponder])
The effect is that the status bar and the keyboard gently slide out before the manual rotation animation and gracefully slide back in, when the animation is done.
BTW, I also found this interesting article by Corey Floyd: http://coreyfloyd.tumblr.com/post/8212203583/2-ways-to-rotate
Although his second method: Tricking UIKit, only caused more confusion with me.

Background UIImageView that doesn't get rotated

I have this UINavigationController-based iPad app that supports all 4 orientations. When I rotate the device, I'd like the background image to stay still and only have the UI on top of it get rearranged/rotated.
I've succeeeded by returning NO to the UIViewController shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation: and handle the orientation myself using UIDeviceOrientationDidChangeNotification
Since only the current view gets rotated (and not the whole window), the UINavigationController push animation doesn't get adjusted. So when you're holding the iPad in landscape right, it pushes the view from the bottom. When you're holding it upside-down, it pushes the view from the left (it should always be from the right).
Any better way to have that background image remain steady while rotating everything else? Or fixing the UINavigationController push animation? I'd like to stick with the controllers if possible (ie not having to play around with manually animating view frames, etc).
As you have seen, UINavigationControllers are very particular about orientation.
I think you are probably better off rotating the background every time the interface is rotated.

Can you tell which image the iPad has displayed at app launch? (or, I'd like to know the orientation if possible)

There are a number of similar questions on this site about discovering the orientation of the device in applicationDidFinishLaunchingWithOptions being problematic, but I've yet to find a working solution. The problem I have is that I am adding a full screen image (identical to the currently chosen Default-XXX.png being displayed by the OS to my main window. I do this in order to have an animation happen from the 'splash screen' to my first view controller's view.
Works great, except the device keeps telling me that it is portrait mode - meaning I can't match the image being displayed consistently, since I have different graphics for each orientation)
My understanding is that all apps default to portrait orientation until a rotation occurs inside the app (usually when presenting a viewController) but I'm not 100% convinced.
You should be able to solve this using a view controller. When the application has finished launching, present a view controller in the window. Override the shouldAutorotate… query so that the controller autorotates to portrait/landscape and when you receive one of the rotation callbacks, update the image in the view accordingly. The controller will start up in portrait, but if the device is in some other orientation, the rotation callback will immediately follow and you will get the correct image.
P.S. You might find the Orientation Zoo project helpful when debugging this.

Force portrait orientation on pushing new view to UINavigationViewController

I have a TabBar bases application, which supports Landscape orientation only for one special view (the rootview of a UINaviagtionController). Now i want to force portrait orientation for all other views for this navigationcontroller.
I have tried to use
[[UIDevice currentDevice] setOrientation:UIDeviceOrientationPortrait];
This works great but this piece of code is a private api call and I can not risk a app rejection.
I have also tried to rotate the next view manually but this rotates only the view and not the navigation or the tab bar.
Is there a similary way to force orientation change?
There is currently no way to do that.
Have a look at this question, I have the same problems. With a tabbar application, you must have everything to autorotate, or nothing. You can find ways to have shouldAutorotate answer differently on each view, but actually this does not work. I don't know if this is an intended behaviour or a bug, anyway the only viable solution I'm aware of (without using undocumented API) is to manage the rotation by yourself, and do not rely on autorotation.
This means in other words that you need to start orientation notifications (look at UIDevice, there are methods to start and stop notifications about the device orientation), then for each view you want to rotate register as observer, and manage orientation manually, like this (don't remember where I got this snippet):
// Rotates the view.
CGAffineTransform transform = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation(M_PI/2);
self.view.transform = transform;

iPhone force rotation

I have been reading a ton on rotation, but not finding a solution to my query. Here goes:
I have a portrait application with a tabbar and hidden navigation controller in my tab. At a point in the app, the next view must be landscape.
The XIB layout has been done in landscape, so I want to bring up the xib without any translation or pixel moving code. (not thinking this is required) I have tried just pushing the view (remains in portrait), shifting the view using various methods (non seem to line thing up properly).
Is there a way to tell the view that it is already laid out for landscape prior to it being opened?
Thanks in advance!
Found it, this code does the trick in the viewdidload:
self.view.transform = CGAffineTransformIdentity;
self.view.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation(degreesToRadian(90));
self.view.bounds = CGRectMake(0.0, 0.0, 460.0, 320.0);
Still have 1 odd thing. No matter what I do to set the navigation bar to hidden, it does not rotate, and stays at the left side of the view.
[[self navigationController] setNavigationBarHidden:YES animated:NO];
Has anyone seed this behavior and solved?
I'm positive that you cannot 'force' a rotation. The system decides when to change the orientation of the device; so the 'orientation' properties are essentially read-only. I looked into this same problem a long time ago when I wanted to make sure a particular view always displayed in one orientation.
Due to this, most apps allow all of their views and view controllers to work in any of the orientations the app supports. I've found that trying to restrict the behavior of some views and view controllers ultimately creates more hassle, and can cause issues when transitioning between views and view controllers.
The code you posted will work for your view. You are not actually changing the orientation at all; your view is just behaving like it has been rotated by drawing in a rotated fashion. I'm not sure if you can do the same thing to the navigation bar or not, but it's worth a shot. If you are able to control the view properties of the navigation bar (it is a UIView as well), applying the same pattern you are using for your custom view should work.
Most apps that want a view to only be in landscape ultimately force their entire app to be in landscape. For instance, Flight Control only supports one orientation. Thus, the drawing code is pretty simple; regardless of orientation, just draw the view and rotate it to the one orientation it supports (either landscape left or right).
Your app's design wouldn't be that easy... it sounds like you are not designing a full-screen app. You would have to worry about the navigation bar and status bar being properly drawn.