How to do Card Deck style page transitioning, Vertically & Horizontally, using UIScrollview (or best practice) - objective-c

Question

I'm creating an app that can slide between pages of a book, left and right (covering or revealing like a card deck), and sliding up and down will either slide down (and cover) a settings page, or slide up (and reveal) to detailed info on the book.
Essentially, its a "card deck" Sliding functionality, similar to this project https://github.com/sweetmandm/CardSliderView-for-iOS which I'm considering using, however I require BOTH vertical AND horizontal "card deck" sliding capability.
To give you another example of the slide/left cover/reveal effect I'm looking, take a look at the new CNN app, where you can slide between articles.
I've also considered using UIPageViewController, however this does not support the "Slide and Reveal / Slide and Cover" transition I'm looking for, rather only a "Slide Over Left or Right" transition, so I would have to hack it somehow and use multiple UIPageViewControllers, one on top of the over, to allow the "reveal and cover" effect to work, using just the gestures from the UIPageViewController to allow the user to swipe.
I'm familiar with the directionalLockEnabled property on UIScrollview, however I'm wondering still what is the overall best approach to get the effect I'm looking for, one that will support both vertical and horizontal, UIScrollView? UIPageViewController? Nested UIScrollviews? Instead of playing around with the directionalLockEnabled property? Something Else?
What would be the best way to achieve the exact user experience I'm looking to provide?

Answer 1

Ok, I found a solution to my own question, using nested UIScrollViews. I also added a very rough solution as project to github: https://github.com/cohen72/InfiniteDeckScroller.
For the horizontal scrolling, I have three horizontal scroll views, one nested into the other. UIScrollview is automatically handling the proper scrolling of each. Depending on the content offset and which scrollview is being scrolled, I know how to "re-arrange/re-order" the nested scrollviews.
Here is a snippet of the solution I came up.
This particular solution allows sliding up to reveal, however I did not yet implement the sliding down to cover, however doing so would use the same approach as the horizontal solution.
#define BOTTOM 1
#define MIDDLE 2
#define TOP 3
#define VERTICAL_SUB 4
- (void)viewDidLoad{
[super viewDidLoad];
UIScrollView *scroll1 = [[UIScrollView alloc] initWithFrame:self.view.bounds];
UIScrollView *scroll2 = [[UIScrollView alloc] initWithFrame:self.view.bounds];
UIScrollView *scroll3 = [[UIScrollView alloc] initWithFrame:self.view.bounds];
UIScrollView *scroll4 = [[UIScrollView alloc] initWithFrame:self.view.bounds];
scroll1.contentSize = CGSizeMake(self.view.frame.size.width * 2, self.view.frame.size.height * 1);
scroll1.tag = BOTTOM;
scroll1.pagingEnabled = YES;
scroll1.bounces = NO;
scroll1.delegate = self;
[scroll1 addSubview:[self labelForScrollView:scroll1 withBgColor:[UIColor redColor]]];
[scroll1 setContentOffset:CGPointMake(0, 0)];
scroll2.contentSize = CGSizeMake(self.view.frame.size.width * 2, self.view.frame.size.height * 1);
scroll2.tag = MIDDLE;
scroll2.pagingEnabled = YES;
scroll2.bounces = NO;
scroll2.delegate = self;
[scroll2 addSubview:[self labelForScrollView:scroll2 withBgColor:[UIColor orangeColor]]];
[scroll2 setContentOffset:CGPointMake(0, 0)];
scroll3.contentSize = CGSizeMake(self.view.frame.size.width * 2, self.view.frame.size.height * 1);
scroll3.tag = TOP;
scroll3.pagingEnabled = YES;
scroll3.bounces = NO;
scroll3.delegate = self;
[scroll3 addSubview:[self labelForScrollView:scroll3 withBgColor:[UIColor yellowColor]]];
[scroll3 setContentOffset:CGPointMake(320, 0)];
scroll4.contentSize = CGSizeMake(self.view.frame.size.width * 1, self.view.frame.size.height * 2);
scroll4.delegate = self;
scroll4.bounces = NO;
scroll4.pagingEnabled = YES;
scroll4.alwaysBounceVertical = NO;
scroll4.tag = VERTICAL_SUB;
[scroll4 addSubview:scroll1];
[scroll1 addSubview:scroll2];
[scroll2 addSubview:scroll3];
[self.view addSubview:scroll4];
}
- (UILabel*)labelForScrollView:(UIScrollView*)scrollView withBgColor:(UIColor*)color{
UILabel *lbl = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:scrollView.bounds];
lbl.textAlignment = NSTextAlignmentCenter;
lbl.backgroundColor = color;
lbl.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"ScrollView: %d", scrollView.tag];
return lbl;
}
-(void)scrollViewDidEndDecelerating:(UIScrollView *)scrollView{
NSLog(#"content offset: %f, tag: %d ", scrollView.contentOffset.x, scrollView.tag);
UIScrollView *newMiddleScrollView, *newBottomScrollView, *newTopScrollView;
// swipe left
if (scrollView.contentOffset.x == 0 && scrollView.tag == TOP) {
newMiddleScrollView = (UIScrollView*)[self.view viewWithTag:TOP];
newTopScrollView = (UIScrollView*)[self.view viewWithTag:BOTTOM];
newBottomScrollView = (UIScrollView*)[self.view viewWithTag:MIDDLE];
}
// swipe right
else if (scrollView.contentOffset.x == 320 && scrollView.tag == MIDDLE) {
newMiddleScrollView = (UIScrollView*)[self.view viewWithTag:BOTTOM];
newTopScrollView = (UIScrollView*)[self.view viewWithTag:MIDDLE];
newBottomScrollView = (UIScrollView*)[self.view viewWithTag:TOP];
}
else {
return;
}
newMiddleScrollView.tag = MIDDLE;
newBottomScrollView.tag = BOTTOM;
newTopScrollView.tag = TOP;
newBottomScrollView.contentOffset = CGPointMake(0, 0);
newMiddleScrollView.contentOffset = CGPointMake(0, 0);
newTopScrollView.contentOffset = CGPointMake(320, 0);
UIScrollView *verticalScrollView_sub = (UIScrollView*)[self.view viewWithTag:VERTICAL_SUB];
[verticalScrollView_sub addSubview:newBottomScrollView];
[newBottomScrollView addSubview:newMiddleScrollView];
[newMiddleScrollView addSubview:newTopScrollView];
}

Answer 2

That's a good question - correct me if I'm wrong here, but it sounds that from left to right there's an arbitrary number of pages/cards, but only a few standard cards to come in from the top or bottom (your settings and details panels).
If that's the case, then you may well want to stick with something along the lines of a UIPageController alongside some gesture recognisers. You set up your page controller (or whatever controller you end up using to achieve your desired cards animation), and then add two gesture recognizers for swipe up and swipe down.
You can then animate your details/settings views in when you receive those gestures, giving you the card like interface without needing to bother with multiple UIPageViewControllers or a scroll view.
This approach isn't so great if you want an arbitrary number of cards in both the horizontal and vertical, but it sounds as if that's not the case.

Answer 3

There would be a lot of different ways to accomplish this, depending on how you want your different controllers to relate to each other. The slide transition itself is pretty simple. I've implemented it this way in a controller that's the superclass of the controller that calls the method:
-(void)SlideInController:(RDSlideController *) next {
next.presentingVC = self;
next.view.frame = CGRectMake(self.view.frame.origin.x + 320, self.view.frame.origin.y, self.view.frame.size.width, self.view.frame.size.height);
[self.view.window addSubview:next.view];
[UIView animateWithDuration:1 animations:^{
next.view.frame = self.view.frame;
} completion:^(BOOL finished) {
self.view.window.rootViewController = next;
}];
}
Then from the newly presented controller, you can call this method to go back:
-(void)SlideOut {
UIViewController *prev = self.presentingVC;
prev.view.frame = self.view.frame;
[self.view.window insertSubview:prev.view belowSubview:self.view];
[UIView animateWithDuration:1 animations:^{
self.view.frame = CGRectMake(self.view.frame.origin.x + 320, self.view.frame.origin.y, self.view.frame.size.width, self.view.frame.size.height);
} completion:^(BOOL finished) {
self.view.window.rootViewController = prev;
}];
}