Relevant Data:
I'm making a simple game, using OpenglES. The game itself is done, however I would like to have a main menu as well as some other screens designed in IB. So far I have a death/score screen that is displayed with a simple modelviewcontroller.
I haven't done a ton with GUI building or much programming on the platform outside of C code (posix sockets) and some examples from some books. So I'm not sure how I would go about having lots of views- usually I just use a model view, and it's gotten me along just fine so far. However I don't think that would be the best route here.
Situation:
I have a view controller that shows my main menu- the main menu branches off to the main game, a settings screen, and a high score screen. The main game is made in opengl, and I haven't made the settings view yet, but it likely will be as well. How should I switch between the views? Presenting the main view from the app delegate is as simple as setting the root view controller = newly created view controller, should I do the same thing here? If I do that can I remove the resources from the menu view controller?
Sorry if this is an extremely simple question, I just don't quite get the process.
I'm not entirely sure what you want to do, but an easy way to show a new view controller is:
SecondViewController *aSecondViewController = [[SecondViewController alloc]
initWithNibName:#"SecondView" bundle:nil];
[self presentModalViewController:aSecondViewController animated:YES];
I hope that helps.
How should I switch between the views?
In the vast majority of cases, you should be using a UINavigationController. Your initial controller would be the main menu. When you want to go into a particular section of your application, you push a new view controller onto the stack. When you want to come back out, you pop it off the stack.
Besides navigation and presenting modally that others have mentioned, another option is to swap out views. May or may not fit your app's flow but wanted to point out another option for you to consider
Best practice for switching iPhone views?
If you are already limiting the game to iOS 5 for some other reason you should look into UIStoryboard. If you don't currently require iOS5 the "simplest" way is to use table views, but that isn't a very "gamey" UI.
Related
I'm trying to do a project for the iPad in which I'd like to utilized the split view controller. I'll be having different detail view controllers for each of the cells in the master view controller.
I saw one solution how to do this via storyboard segues in this site.
He basically linked each of his UITableViewCell to different detail view controllers. But I'd like to know if this is a "stable" or a "good" way of doing this. I mean, is it any better or as stable as doing it programmatically? What would be the consequences of doing his method, if there are any?
Here is the link to the solution I found
This is kind of a tricky one, even though it's an incredibly common use case.
1) One idea is to have an empty root view controller as your detail and it handles managing segues under the hood to quickly segue to the detail view you actually care about, utilizing the "replace" segue. This should "technically" fix having the "back" button at the top left and still allow you to pop to root and not have it show the empty controller. Haven't tested these though, so I'm not sure.
Edit: In Xcode 6, the "replace" segue is conveniently handled by a "show detail" segue which is used specifically for this type of view handling on Split View Controllers. I recommend using this method exclusively in new projects. See sample code.
2) The other idea is to have separate navigation controllers in your storyboard (one connected, the rest all stranded). One for each detail view type and tapping on the master menu will simply swap the navigation controller for the detail view to the one you care about.
Code similar to this in AppDelegate:
self.detailNavigationController = [self.masterNavigationController.storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:#"MyChosenNavigationControllerStoryboardId"];
self.splitViewController.viewControllers = #[self.splitViewController.viewControllers[0], self.detailNavigationController];
self.splitViewController.delegate = (id)self.detailNavigationController.topViewController;
The downside to this second way is that in memory tests, it doesn't appear that swapping a new nav controllers in frees up all of the memory that the old nav controller was using. So it's good to use for simple apps but not for anything crazy complex.
I have looked at the sample generated by xcode when creating a new UISplitView app on the iPad along with countless other tutorials and the documentation from the apple developer site. I have not seen an example where the UISplitView used was not the root of the application. Is this even possible?
What I am trying to accomplish: I have a UITableView to start out and once an item in the list is selected I would like to display a splitview with two different sets of information that is based on the item that was selected.
I curious if this type of implementation is even possible, or just frowned upon, and why. If it is possible, how would I go about implementing and hooking up a UISplitView to behave in this way?
Edit: I'm updating this with what I have. I can now switch to my UISplitView, though the transition is not animated. What is the way to correctly switch to a UISplitView so the transition is animated?
Code for switching right now:
[appDelegate.window addSubview:appDelegate.splitViewController.view];
appDelegate.window.rootViewController = appDelegate.splitViewController;
EDIT 2: In hopes of bumping this back up so more people see it, I have managed to switch from my navigationController to my splitViewController, but when I add the button to be able to navigate back, nothing I do makes a difference and I seem to be locked in. I tried reverse mirroring the code to switch to the splitViewController, but that had no affect, and I am completely out of ideas. Can anyone shed some light on this?
You should always use SplitViewController as a rootViewController: Split view controller must be root view controller
There may be some hacks around it, but when Apple have a strong recommendation and design guidance, I suggest to try to re-think your design before going against the platform -it should save you effort in the long term.
I recommend using the MGSplitViewController, it also works as a non-rootViewController, even nested into an another MGSplitViewController, and there's i.e. a one-liner for the animation to blend in the Master-View, if that is what you want.
In your UITableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath method you would have something like:
UISplitViewController *mySplitView = [[UISplitViewController alloc] init];
[self.navigationController pushViewController:mySplitView animated:YES];
[mySplitView release];
Probably you'll want to subclass UISplitViewController just like you would other view controllers and set in there the master and detail views and so on.
I want to make an iPad application (I'm actually making it now, it's just not working...) where I start out with a login screen for the users and if they authenticate I want to transition to another screen which will have a TabBar.
Right now I have my iPadAppDelegate with a MainWindow XIB file. In MainWindow I have a SignInViewController which is matching a class and XIB file of the same names. The SignInViewControlelr XIB contains all the text fields and buttons the user needs to sign in.
If the user is authorized I want to transition to the screen with a TabBar, which is why I have a UITabBarController in MainWindow XIB, but I can't seem to transition to it.
Ultimatelly, I think I'm misunderstanding how Cocoa's version of MVC works (my MVC knowledge is limited to ASP.NET MVC since it was in v1 preview 1... And as I can see it right now there's big differences, but I am most likely very wrong, hence the misunderstanding). Perhaps I'm using too many controllers and too little views or just not placing them where they should be, let alone writing the code to interact with them...
I'd appreciate an explanation on how I should properly structure the controllers and views to get what I want to achieve. An app similar to what I want to do is the AT&T myWirelss app.
Help would be appreciated!
P.S. I've litereally been learning how to make iOS apps from watching the videos of xvitcoder on YouTube and further adding the functionality I need while asking questions on how to add the functionality I need. The videos are good (I think), but I'm trying to do something that isn't really explained by them (I think).
UPDATE
The code I ended up using, which works, although I'm not sure if its the proper way of doing it:
DashboardViewController *dashboardViewController = [[DashboardViewController alloc] initWithNibName:#"DashboardViewController" bundle:nil];
[appDelegate.window insertSubview:dashboardViewController.view aboveSubview:self.view];
[dashboardViewController release];
You may find the View Controller Programming Guide informative. Ultimately you can have a derivative of UIViewController that you use to internally manage your different views/view controllers or you may also utilize a UINavigationController.
A really good simple model of flipping between big views is provided by the "Utility Application" of the iPhone templates. It shows how a view controller can call another controller. This might give you a start.
I would like to create an utility application that has a navigation based flipside, or "info", view. What would the most efficient way to accomplish this be? I think that i 'simply' need to make a root view controller for the flipside view...but i really only understand that conceptually...not so much how to go about it or, at least, i am not confident that i know how to go about it.
I apologize for the slightly "make my app" nature of this question i have books and books and books...but it shakes out so much differently when i want to make my own project.
You can use a view controller for the flipside view, or you could create / load a view in your app delegate. In the latter case, you can set up the delegate to respond to the info button press, and then set up a transition to the new view which will have a button (which the app delegate also responds to) that transitions back to the previous view.
There is a basic tutorial I found for this here:
http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/iphone-sdk-development/12222-how-do-i-create-uiview-flip-animation.html#post104474
It should be able to at least get you started.
Why do Navigation Applications use pushViewController instead of presentModalViewController like all the other apps? How can a Navigation Application be modified to use presentModalViewController instead? Would it be sub-optimal to do so? Why?
Navigation view controllers and modal view controllers are there for different purposes. The first is used for display hierarchical nested contents. While you request more detailed info about an item, you go deeper in the hierarch pushing more detailed views over the stack.
The modal view is there for displaing only one view over the current. Its usefull for stuff like an info button for your app.
Your question is a little bit like asking why UISplitViewControllers use two controllers and lay their views out side-by-side. That is, UINavigationControllers use pushViewController: to manage their stack of UIViewController instances because that's how Apple decided UINavigationControllers should work. When animated into view, pushed views will slide in from the right and old views slide in from the left when a view is popped.
ANY instance of a UIViewController can use presentModalViewController to display the view of another UIViewController over top of it's own view in a manner which prevents the user from interacting with the view underneath. Depending on the device (iPhone, iPad) you have various options for the visual appearance of the newly presented view and the animation used to bring it into view.
There's nothing stopping you from writing an application that just keeps having one view bring up the next view using presentModalViewController but there'd be no reason to use a UINavigationController to do so. I've never checked if there was a meaningful difference in memory consumption or any other thing you could measure to judge whether doing so is "sub-optimal" from a technical perspective, but it's certainly not the norm so might be sub-optimal from the user experience perspective. Whether that is true or not for your app depends on whether users seem to think the interaction makes sense to them.
Navigation view controllers uses the concept of Stack.Your navigation is stored in stack that's why you can push & pop the View which shows that you can use them for the detail view ....making a hierarchy of views
whereas modal view controllers shows only one view at a time......this is generally used for new flow in app.