In a project I am working with in Swift, I have a huge form that needs to be filled out. I found the best way to present the form was by combining many table views in a Modal Popover that takes over 75%ish of the screen. Using animation and a custom build Array of ViewControllers, I created something very similar to a Navigation Stack that never kept any views in it if they were data intensive by keeping them at the top or second to the top of the stack. It would push them onto the left or right side of the modal, all being done with a simple one liner outside of the Container Controller. Is this implementation bad to use for any reason? I feel like I might have bypassed a natural way of making this work without realizing it was an option.
My skills in Swift have been skyrocketing since I left my college in December, but I don't work directly with anyone more knowledgeable than me in Swift. This makes some of the more complex questions hard to answer without intense amounts of research. (which I am not opposed to if I can find an answer) I am expected to provide a quality working product in the end though, so I need to be assured that I am not making any mistakes that are at the backbone of my project.
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I use the MVC programming model. I am running into a problem using Unity's hierarchy inspector. Say I have a Controller script: C_CardDrag. Now, because this drags a UI item thats nested several layers deep, it won't be readily apparenty that this C_CardDrag script is attached to an icon within in the card, and NOT the root object. You see what I mean in the image below (the blue highlight is where the C_Drag needs to be attached, NOT the top level object, otherwise the whole thing gets dragged when I only want the icon in the middle dragged).
I feel that it can be VERY confusing to design and name classes when they need to appear on nested objects.
Do you have any design practices I can follow to make script names clearer to where they are attached?
For example say I have a Tree object, and it has several brances. And lets say I have a C_Tree script, and a C_Branch script. How would you handle making it clear that C_Tree goes on a Tree, a TOP level object, where as C_Branch goes on a nested UI object?
Update:
Found a good resource here: Component based game engine design
Like any software that is being developed, you should only apply the appropriate Architectural and Design patterns that fit that project.
For example:
I was building a game that would be used for different devices. Although Unity lets you switch from Android to iOS seemingly easy. This game could be played completely differently on different devices, so I wen't with MVC.
Another game was built around Peer to Peer.
So overall you have a lot of options.
The way you can organize your files is by folders in the Project section of the Editor. I like to use something like this:
You will notice the Model is not in the Hierarchy. I don't use MonoBehaviours for models. In some cases, even the Controller could be non-MonoBehaviour code. That is why I prefer to have all the organization happen in the Project not the Hierarchy.
I've inherited a project that uses ~100 Xcode storyboard scenes. Trying to add to this project has been a nightmare for the following reasons:
My machine (late 2011 Macbook Pro 13inch with non-SSD drive 16GB running 10.8 + XCode 4.4) crawls to a halt on storyboards. In some cases I'll move a scene and it will take 10 seconds to update its position.
When I modify a scene (create a segue between two scenes, etc) in some cases all the scenes disappear. I have to do a "select all" on the sidebar to get them back.
Navigating a specific storyboard scene is absolutely frustrating. There's no apparent way to sort the storyboard scenes by name.
The filter feature below the scenes sidebar kind of lets me find the scene I'm looking for, but has the frustrating side effect of filtering out the attributes (segues, views, etc) of the specific scene I'm looking for. So if I need to modify the "add_new_guy" segue for "Person View Controller", and I type "Person" in the filter, I get the Person View Controller sans the add_new_guy segue. If I delete the text in the filter to make the segue appear, I'm taken back to the top of the scene list and (most likely) away from the Person View Controller at the other end of it. I end up scrolling all the way down the scene list manually looking for the specific scene I want to change.
I've spent hours googling solutions and nothing useful has appeared. Any suggestions on how to improve the storyboards situation or pointers to things in XCode I've stupidly overlooked?
Disclaimers:
a) I am well aware that moving to nibs would solve the problem and 100 storyboard scenes is nuts, but I've inherited the code and I'm expected to do storyboards for at least the next year.
b) I'm aware that it's possible to split out the project into several storyboards. I might look into this if I have time.
c) I've heard that some problems may be caused by having two storyboards open at once, which I've tried to avoid as much as possible.
d) Filing a bug with Apple's regarding storyboards is already on my to-do list.
First, work on splitting your storyboard up into smaller storyboards. I would recommend a maximum of 4-5 view controllers per storyboard. It will be a giant headache at first, just work on it over time. Take a look at RBStoryboardLink, which allows you to connect them "by allowing 'pseudo-segues' between UIStoryboards. These segues can be built without leaving Interface Builder and without writing any extra code". This will give you:
The ability to make abstract super classes in storyboards for very similar view controllers
Smaller, more manageable files that don't bring your computer to a halt
Fewer merge conflicts when working as part of a team (assuming your project is under version control)
Second, tell your boss to immediately purchase you a new, way better development computer. They'll make back the $3-$4k in more efficient development time in a matter of days. (Or, if this is contract work… buy a new one yourself.)
And, please indulge my slightly off-topic comment.
Regarding this statement:
I'm expected to do storyboards for at least the next year
Work expectations are always negotiable. Your boss likely thinks "switching from storyboards to code will cost more time than it will save." If this isn't true, say so.
I am working with flex for the last two years on some desktop apps. Until now I never had any performance related issues but today as we completed a mobile application for the iPad, I'm facing a challenge, the application is incredibly slow on the iPad.
http://i.stack.imgur.com/qkbWn.png
Slow, means that when I press a button in the menu to change the splitview I must wait something like 5s. Then scrolling is really slow two, with less than one fps and my TextInput starts to bug (the text is not in his box anymore).
I started to read a lot of blog post and presentation about optimisation for the mobile platform and then I rewrite some of the components I use. I removed the SkinnableContainer for instance and replaced it by a VGroup including some actionScript based drawing.
Now what you see is a VGroup (the dark grey one) containing some others VGroup (the group with title here) and then each widget is an HGroup with a label and a Widget. I only use Label and TextInput for the text.
Creation time is slow even (several seconds to create the view) for another page where there is only 4 text widget on it, or another one with only a list with a custom item renderer where each row is a set of 4 labels.
The whole things is cabled with RobotLegs, with nothing fancy, one models is injected in the view and at the beginning I set a member variable on the view with this object to bind my variables.
Frankly my thinking right now is : it smells fishy because if I've done everything right it is impossible to have such low performance and thinks that flex is competitive on the mobile platform. So right now I'm trying to disable the application piece by piece to try to locate what could slow it like that. I've got a couple suspects to check, for instance I've got some binding warning to check, and then see if robotlegs has got its share of the problem.
So my main question here is what do you think, and could you have some ideas about "is there a problem" and "how do we solve it".
Thanks
Run profiler for startup and separatelly for each operation that takes longed that it needs. Then prioritize the problems and try to solve them with basic optimization techniques.
Some problems you will not be able to solve fast - e.g. time for creating big components. The only option there is to rewrite those components with AS3 without MXML, styles and anything. I'm sure that flash.text.TextField is created many times faster than mx.controls.Label. The same for other components.
When component is created, it can be reused at a very low price. In your app there must be a lot of places where you recreate while you can reuse old components. It will save you memory and time.
Layouts tend to redraw even when it's not needed. If you have a lot of nested layouts, find the most critical places and replace a series of layouts with one custom layout or even component.
This all is very developer time consuming. At the end you will not get a smooth app anyway, but I believe that it can become usable.
when i use pivot with in the panorama .pivot are used as a gallery view. i want to move pivot when i swipe it .but the problem is this because of both panorama and pivot are the same gesture event so both are they move .
i want swipe only my pivot view .
I would like some sample code or any other suggestion to do this.
so please give me a solution for doing this and
also give me a link where i easily understand this. Thanx in advance
You shouldn't have a Pivot in a Panorama control. End of discussion.
I believe it is achievable, because I've already solved similar issues with having WebBrowser control inside a custom horizontal-scrollable overview container like Pivot/Panorama, but believe me, it is NOT worth it. I've had to dig very deep into the visualstructure of the controls and attach my own manipulation-handlers to their viscera, manually choose which horiz/verti events to pass and which to cancel, and so on. This is not so easy, takes a lot of time, and doesn't guarantee that on the end you will have something behaving in a way you wanted to achieve in the first place. If you are not bound by some contract to preserve the shape of the UI, please, drop the idea and redesign your UI, just to save on your sanity and nerves.
But, if you are already insane or really want to dig where noone should, start on analysing your UI as a two rectangles: large pano and small pivo, and think which part should behave how on different possible touches/h-v swipes/h-v pans/pinches/so on. Write it down just to for reference, or soon you will probably start making small mistakes that will interfere with your understaning of the flow of the events.
I've checked the version I have, and "my" Panorama uses internally the UIElement.ManipulationXXXX events. In that case:
Display visualtrees of your UI and try attaching manipulation-events to every control. In those events, write/log which control's which handler was invoked. Then make some swipe/scroll on your APP and observe events. Analyze how they were bubbling and try cancelling (e.Handled=true) the manipulation-completed and/or manipulation-delta events somewhere between pivot and panorama. Your goal is to have the panorama see that e.Handled=true, while your pivot must see e.Handled=false. Your Pivot will probably see the event sooner than the Pano, so that point should be relatively easy.
If it fails to work, then you should check your version of the Pano, and check how it detects movements. If, for example, it uses the GestureListener - try the same trick with it. Etc.
And remember, you can always make your own horizontal-overwiew-container that will look like Pano, behave like Pano, and that will work with Pivo better - because it will be your code and you will tell it what and when to move. if you want to go this way, start on google and check all the preliminary Panorama previews that random people have published before that control was published by MS.
Thinking about divide and conquer, I decided to start an application having small pieces of my big app. I thought it was more convenient and easier specially as far as errors go. When I tried to merge two of them, I faced the problem of having separate delegates, and mainwindow. Maybe merging the method of the delegate applicationDidFinishLaunching and knowing how to convert one of the mainwindows to a viewcontroller is not working. How do I take two projects and combine them into one? On one I have a TabBar controller app, and one of the tabs is the scrollview with page control app I want to merge with. Therefore, two delegates, two mainwindow.
Figure out which one of the apps has the most code that can be used in the final app, and merge the other one into it. This is a good time to check and see how purely object oriented your app is, so that the sharing of objects could be as simple as just adding the class file and header into your main app. As for app delegates, just pick one. You shouldn't need two. In my app delegates there are maybe 3-5 lines that are different than what the template contains, so it's not hard to change it or modify it slightly.
Again, think about code reuse, and use this opportunity to make your classes follow the MVC and be as independent of each other as possible. You'll thank yourself later when you are working on your next app and can use code you have previously written without having to go through all this work.