I just watched the WWDC video #216, "Building Adaptive UI with UIKit."
At about 45:10 Tony Ricciardi talks about changes to IB in Xcode 6 to support the new changes.
He says "You can deploy these documents backwards to older versions of iOS".
(where "These documents" presumably means XIBs and storyboards that have specific settings for different size classes.)
I'm not making this up. Go watch the WWDC video.
How is that possible? Trait collections and size classes are only defined in iOS 8. How can runtime behavior that's dependent on UI constructs that are new to iOS 8 work in previous iOS versions?
If it is possible it would be wonderful. You could build apps that will run on iOS 6, 7, and 8, and take advantage of the new flexible UI layout abilities that Apple has added to Xcode 6. I've created adaptive UI logic myself in code, and it's quite a bit of work.
Changes made to the UI with Size Classes in Interface Builder DO appear correctly on iOS 7 devices and the Preview in Xcode. For example, I changed some Auto Layout constraints and font sizes for Regular height Regular width and those changed constraints are visible in the iPad Simulator running iOS 7.0.
All size class optimizations are made available to iOS 7, except size classes that have a Compact Height. This has been confirmed by Apple and is now stated directly in the documentation:
For apps supporting versions of iOS earlier than iOS 8, most size classes are backward compatible.
Size classes are backward compatible when:
- The app is built using Xcode version 6 or later
- The deployment target of the app is earlier than iOS 8
- Size classes are specified in a storyboard or xib
- The value of the height component is not compact
Because iOS 7 doesn't respect a couple of size classes, if you use them you'll run into issues. For example:
When you have Compact w Any h defined and then Compact w Compact h defined, on iOS 7 it will respect the Compact w Any h but on iOS 8 it renders the Compact w Compact h appearance.
So, if you would like to utilize those two size classes and maintain compatibility with iOS 7, I would do any optimizations you desire for iPhone in landscape in Any w Any h or Compact w Any h, then perform your other optimizations for different size classes as necessary, and that way you won't need to use any size class with compact height and will avoid running into issues.
When deploying your app to iOS 7, Xcode will compile your storyboard in two different ways:
For iPhone, your storyboard gets compiled as "Compact-Regular" (Compact width, regular height), and this gets packaged as your "~iphone" nib.
For iPad, your storyboard gets compiled as "Regular-Regular" and gets packaged as your "~ipad" nib.
So if you're looking to deploy to both iOS 7 and iOS 8, you should focus your design on the Compact-Any and Regular-Any size classes. That will give you the best experience in terms of matching the UI across deployment targets. You are, of course, welcome to modify the layout for other size classes, but unless those modifications would get applied to the Compact-Regular or Regular-Regular size classes, then you would not see those modifications on iOS 7.
Note: This answer was relevant to a beta version of Xcode 6 and is no longer applicable to the shipping version. See answers by Joey and Dave DeLong on this page for proper information.
(original answer retained below):
While Storyboards/XIBs configured to use size classes will run on iOS 7, the OS does not currently respect those size classes and appears to use the default 'Any/Any' size class.
I agree that the particular slide you are referring to seems to promise such compatibility, but it doesn't appear to be the case currently (Xcode 6 beta 2).
To test, I created a project (iOS 8 SDK, deployment target of 7.1) with a single button that is centered vertically and horizontally in the Any/Any size class, but aligned to the top left corner in the Compact/Compact size class (e.g. iPhone in landscape). Xcode's Preview Assistant shows that the button changes its position in iOS 8, but not iOS 7. I confirmed this behavior on an iOS 7 device as well.
As some of the answers and comments were discussing the nature of backwards-compatibility, I thought I would share an excerpt direct from the Apple Documentation:
~~~~~
Deploying an App With Size Classes on Earlier iOS Versions
For apps supporting versions of iOS earlier than iOS 8, most size classes are backward compatible.
Size classes are backward compatible when:
The app is built using Xcode version 6 or later
The deployment target of the app is earlier than iOS 8
Size classes are specified in a storyboard or xib
The value of the height component is not compact
~~~~~
That last bullet point is targeted at this discussion, where Apple confirms that as long as "compact height" is not used, it should maintain backwards-compatibility.
Hope this helps someone!
While dealing with the similar issue I found another answer that I haven't seen here yet. Looks like Size Classes in XIB files are not working at all. If I create cell prototype in the storyboard file it works in iOS7 as explained in other answers, however when the same prototype cell is moved into separate XIB file - size classes are ignored in iOS7.
Here is link to the sample project demonstrating this behavior: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6402890/testSizeClasses.zip
In the prototype cell I have four constraints from each edge of the grey view. Each of the is configured in a same way: Any/Any - 10, Regular/Regular - 20
It works fine in iOS8 simulator for both XIB and Storyboard, and in iOS7 only cells defined in Storyboard gets updated constraints on iPad:
If it saves anyone time, I believe that the way Xcode 6 provides quasi-backwards compatibility for size classes is via the historical ~ipad and ~iphone suffixed storyboards, and nothing more. This makes sense since size classes are a more abstracted way of how we previously defined an iPad storyboard, and an iPhone storyboard.
Therefore:
If your goal is to use size classes to support device family specific layouts (iPad vs. iPhone), then you are in luck: size classes are a nicer interface to the previously supported method.
If your goal is to use size classes to support altered layouts for different models within the same device family - ie. iPhone 5/6/6+ inc. landscape, then you are out of luck. Using these would require a minimum iOS 8 deployment target.
#lducool - In interface builder, in the Identity inspector, change 'Builds For' to iOS7.1 and later.
Unfortunately the answers from Dave and Joey do not work for me.
I am not allowed to comment in this thread, so please forgive me if this is the wrong place.
I have made up a specific question for that:
Example for iPhone portrait landscape adaptive UI which is backwards-compatible with iOS 7
From what I learned so far, I believe now that, like in my example, is is not possible to have 2 separate, different constraints for one ui element in portrait and landscape mode with iPhone iOS7 based on size classes.
Would be glad if I am mistaken, though.
Do you know a level editor compatible with Sprite Kit for iOS?
I would need a software similar to Cocos Builder that is good but as far as I know it is not compatible with Sprite Kit.
Thank you.
Here's a list. In alphabetical order, as of July 5th, 2015:
Available:
Level Helper 2 apparently supports Sprite Kit (link to docs)
Sprite Kit Designer is designed specifically for Sprite Kit but has not been updated since April 2014 (possibly discontinued?)
Xcode has a Sprite Kit Scene Editor built-in (Scene Editor)
Not (yet) available
SpriteBuilder v1.1 beta had experimental support for Sprite Kit (w/o physics) but this feature was dropped.
If you know a Sprite Kit (or compatible) visual design tool that's not listed here please add it as a comment. I will update the list infrequently.
I know this is an old question, but Xcode 6 which is in beta right now, has a level editor for SpriteKit built in. I'm having a hard time find a good tutorial on it, but its worth checking out. And if anyone finds a good tutorial on this, for a beginner like me, I'd love to know about it.
I have read dozens of questions about mimicking iOS 7 blur effect in earlier versions of iOS. But the fundamental question that arises here is does iOS 7's UIKit really have a nice and convenient way to make any UIView blurred? That seems quite logical to me. Any help appreciated.
Apple has provided sample code to blur any UIImage in iOS 7's style.
Go to Apple Developer downloads and log in if necessary. Search for "imageeffects" to bring up the WWDC 2013 Sample Code entry, and download the iOS_UIImageEffects sample code.
In that project, there's a UIImage category in UIImage+ImageEffects.h that you can copy into your own project, containing the applyBlurWithRadius:... method.
You'll need to link your project with the Accelerate framework.
This won't automatically do a blur on a view in realtime — for that, see FXBlurView, which performs a similar technique by automatically snapshotting its superview. It can be pretty performance-intensive, though: consider first whether you can achieve what you want by statically blurring an image, rather than trying to "live"-blur moving content.
UPDATE
As of iOS 8.0 (not iOS 7), UIKit provides UIVisualEffectView and UIBlurEffect. You can watch WWDC 2014 Session 419 “Advanced Graphics and Animations for iOS Apps” (or just download the slides) for an introduction to these classes.
ORIGINAL
No, it doesn't. Apple has not exposed an interface for doing this conveniently. For example, if you read through this discussion, Rincewind's responses should make it clear that Apple doesn't provide a public API for this, and that the private APIs they use have serious limits and are likely to change.
You must implement the blur effect yourself. You'll probably want to use the new -[UIView drawViewHierarchyInRect:afterScreenUpdates:] method to capture the appearance of the background view, and then apply a CIFilter to it to perform the blur.
UIKit does not have a convenient way of achieving this effect. However, there's a few libraries on Github that easily achieve this effect. Nick Lockwood's seems to be the most popular.
I need to create an iOS 5 application will run on iPad2 (I can use private API because the App will not be released in App Store) will show live stream from front camera, recognize eyes and render a pair of glasses (I have the 3D model) following face movements.
Which is the best approach and the best technology (e.g. OpenGL ES) I can use?
Just use the libraries included in XCode. I have a sample here. It's got everything you need.
It uses the AVFoundation, CoreImage, CoreMedia, and CoreVideo frameworks.
I want to use 'marker reader' technology in my iPhone application (you have a piece of paper, you point the iphone camera at it and information is bein drawn up from it). What API kits can i use/are availible?
The closest SDK I can think of is ARToolKit which should help in a Framework Solution for finding Markers and deriving information. There are a couple of other Frameworks which could be used and I've listed below:
Layar
ARToolKit
Popcode
SGAREnvironment