I currently have an iPhone app thats uses xib's as the graphical interface.
We are planning to make an iPad app using the same code, but with a completely different graphical interface.
I really like storyboards because of the nice flow and overview and was thinking of using it only for the iPad, but I'm also considering not to because:
Is it bad practice to have one for iPad but not for iPhone?
The seque and push/present can probably be confusing?
Having more developers in a storyboard can give merge nightmares?
Thanks in advance
Is it bad practice to have one for iPad but not for iPhone?
If you continue to use only XIBs, do the same for both if its a universal app. It will be confusing for others who may work on your code. And you might end up with a lot of if else code.
The seque and push/present can probably be confusing?
Once you get used to it, its really a useful way of navigating between controllers. If you have any specific questions do point it out.
Having more developers in a storyboard can give merge nightmares?
Its just a XML document, any versioning system out there can handle merges pretty easily. As with any file if two or more developers have worked on same piece of code (in this case can be color change, layout change) then yes it will get conflicted. And developers should be in sync. If one dev is changing the whole structure of the controllers then yes it will be a nightmare. You need to wait and get the latest working copy and ammend your changes.
And you dont have to put all eggs in one basket. You can have multiple storyboards as well.
Related
I am currently developing a new iOS app which is basically a decision tree app. All the data comes from an XML file (list of questions and logic path depending on answers). The XML reading is not a problem.
I know I could develop this by hardcoding everything in the storyboard, but I don't find this efficient. Design-wise, I don't know where to start to sort of build the storyboard dynamically. What stops me is that, based on what the user answers, some paths have different number of levels (or questions); so different storyboard screens.
Any help would be much appreciated!
You may want to build your views "manually" from code.
I am planning to develop my first app in Cocoa. I have been collecting ideas for the UI and have settled in with the design very similar to iPhoto (i.e. library style or 'shoebox' application as referred by Apple's programming guide). In a nutshell I need master detail kind of setup like in iOS (iPad's UISplitview).
To achieve this should I put a NSSplitview and on the left panel have a NSTableView and on the right panel have a NSCollectionView?
Are there any examples/boilerplate or tutorials for creating app in OS X?
Your instincts are correct. You might decide eventually you want something more customizable that an NSCollectionView, but it’ll get you started fast and you can do most of what iPhoto does with it. (You can’t do rows with varying #s of items on them, like Delicious Library does, unless you write your own view.)
I am learning cocoa, and I am creating an application that will require similiar layout to the screenshot below (this seems like a very common layout approach).
What kind of controls/architecture would this type of Cocoa application be?
I'm still in my early stages of learning/reading, and I know of document based applications only so far, but this type of layout doesn't seem to look like a document based app since it doesn't really require multiple windows opened.
If it isn't document, is there a name for other design patters or layouts?
From what I now so far, I would describe this like:
I would be grateful if someone could give me a detailed overview of the high level design for an app like this i.e. things like: # of panels, views used, controls, controllers etc?
Also, a few quick sub-questions:
what kind of menu controls are those in the left pane, then expand and display sub elements?
When preferences windows are displayed, what is that effect called that makes it display in an animated way (like the address book does), where it is a small window that expands to its correct size in an animated fashion.
You are right that this is probably not a document based application, as they open documents in new windows by default.
To layout the window like that, there’d be an NSSplitView that contains the 3 panes. Each pane may optionally contain a view loaded from an NSViewController, which can help keep the code modularised, but it depends on what you’re trying to do if this is appropriate.
The left pane would be an NSOutlineView (a NSTableView subclass), the middle an NSTableView, but I’m not sure exactly how the right-hand side view would be created (lots of custom NSViews and other things, possibly WebView)
That popover options window is possibly a NSPopover (which contains an NSViewController), but that’s only compatible with OS X 10.7, so may also be totally custom for backwards compatibility and easier customisation.
Also note this is a fairly complicated example you’ve given, with lots of custom controls that are probably harder to create than they look:
To get the outline views on the left to have unread counts and icons (from memory) is not built into AppKit, so was all custom created. To do things like that, you’ll need a solid understanding of NSCell vs NSView, and ideally also know about Core Animation layer backed views, and what to use for different aspects.
The window has a taller-than usual title bar. This means the developer probably had to do some crazy stuff to get it to work, if not create the whole window from scratch.
That’s just the start. There’s lots of really nice design in there that’s custom and done from scratch.
Designing Mac apps can be hard sometimes. AppKit is pretty old (back from the NEXT days), and has lots of legacy stuck in it. UIKit on iOS on the other hand is quite nice – Apple clearly learned from their past and made things much better.
I’ve hardly touched on the controllers and model behind all that. There’s lots of different ways you could do it. For persistence, you could use CoreData, sqlite, NSKeyedArchived, just to name a few. Brent Simmons (past developer of another RSS reader, NetNewsWire) wrote some interesting blog posts about that:
http://inessential.com/2010/02/26/on_switching_away_from_core_data
http://inessential.com/2011/09/22/core_data_revisited
The way you design your model & controllers really depends on the specific problem. Cocoa really forces you to stick to MVC though – if you don’t, things are guaranteed to end up messy.
I hope that all helps! I’m really only just learning myself too.
Apple refers to this type of application design as Single-window, library- (or “shoebox”) style and gives a number of recommendations for this design choice in the docs.
(see Mac App Programming Guide)
I have the core of an iPad app made up, its relatively simple. However I want to add support to portrait mode (currently works in landscape). Trouble is, its quite a customised, unique interface, made of different uiimages, labels, etc
So how when the user rotates the iPad, can I handle the movement of all these objects? Whats the best way to do it?
Thanks.
If you have designed the interface in interface builder, you can build up the relationships between GUI elements through the interface builder, and at a first shot, see what it does with the rotation. This MAY work for you, I know there are interfaces I have designed where this is NOT an option, and others where it works just fine.
Else, You may have to write all of the positioning code yourself. Probably the Best way to do this from my experiance is to use pre-processor directives to define your positions for all of your elements in each of the 2 orientations. This way you write the routines for manipulation and then your small tweaks that you may need to make after you let it run the first time can simply be numeric tweaks in your pre-processor directives file.
http://bynomial.com/blog/?p=85
http://the.ichibod.com/kiji/how-to-handle-device-rotation-for-uiviews-in-ios/
Being a somewhat proficient iOS developer, I have just started working on a desktop OSX project in Cocoa and I'm running into issues that I just can't grasp. So this question is for the OSX developers out there.
I don't like the Interface Builder much, so I tend to write my views in code. The most prominent method I write my view layout code in is a view controller's loadView method, and at least on iOS I use autoresizingMasks for everything. Try out the view small, large, rotated landscape and portrait and if all is dandy, I continue with the next item on my list. Now on the desktop, the autoresizingMask works (or just looks) a little bit different. First of all the properties have different names, but their behavior also seems weird or unexpected.
When I ran into the issue below, I thought it must be my code was wrong, so after trying out long enough I re-created it with Interface Builder just for confirmation's sake, and guess what: I got the exact same result. Take a view with four vertically stacked subviews. Set the middle two to have flexible heights, the outer ones to be fixed. When you run it, size it down and back up again, I get two completely different layouts before and after the resize. See image:
Now I can follow why this happens from a mathematical standpoint between run loops, but from the point of an 'autosizing' or 'autoresizing' feature, this makes absolutely no sense.
Before I try to write the mother-of-all-resizing-topics here, might I ask you these questions? Feel free to elaborate some more on the resizing topic if you feel it adds to the post.
Am I a fool for not wanting to use the Interface Builder on desktop projects?
Should I depend on the autoresizingMask less than I would on iOS projects?
What are decent alternatives to making sure your layout lives up to standards without Interface Builder?
Cheers!
Yes, in my opinion. :)
You should depend on it when it does what you need. When it's insufficient, override resizeSubviewsWithOldSize: and/or resizeWithOldSuperviewSize: (or see below).
???
If you can target 10.7, look at the new constraint-based layout system. Check out the Cocoa Autolayout video from WWDC 2011.
You could also set minSize on your NSWindow to something large enough to prevent the singularity.
I'm not sure I'd say "fool," but refusing to use Interface Builder on the Mac is a very…avante-garde choice.
You should definitely use autosizing on your views.
Be maniacally attentive and spend lots of time making sure everything is right. (This is why I don't recommend going without Interface Builder. In general, what you get is a lot of wasted time that you could have spent doing something else.)
In this case, I think the best approach would be to set a sensible minimum height for the window. Don't let it get too small to display what it needs to display.