When the tableView has different styles, what should I do？I got two solutions， 1.Creating several different cells，and their Identifier are also different
2.Linear layout，like android。
which solution is better
I think first choice is better. You can set different cell id for each cell style. It is very easy to implement in storyboard.
Related
I created a custom NSView that displays some data exactly the way I want it to (a line chart of sorts). I now want to add a couple of sliders to have the ability to zoom the displayed data in and out. I would also like to add a couple of checkboxes so that the incoming data can be interpreted and graphed in different ways, and maybe some scrollbars to be able to see past data. I need to have at least 5 copies of this view (with all its controls) on screen at the same time, each showing a different data feed.
This way of thinking a user interface falls nicely into the WebComponents paradigm where you can design a component that encapsulates many different ones. As I understand it, there is no way of nesting controls like this into a master control in Xcode.
Of course I could layout all the views and all the controls separately inside a view controller and achieve exactly what I want but it would not be as maintainable as having ONE object that I can duplicate either in interface builder or in code.
My question is: what is the proper way to achieve this in Xcode (if any)? I don't need code examples but rather a conceptual answer and I'm only interested in answers related to Cocoa rather than CocoaTouch.
I just learned that you can have multiple view controllers as child controllers. This is exactly what I was looking for as it maximizes reusability and reduces maintenance.
In order to explain what problem I am having I will quickly explain the scenario. I have a synthesizer I am building that has several "control views". One control view may be 4 vertical sliders while another is one big matrix or something.. So, say I have control views 1-4. In addition, I have two main sections (which are just holder views), which can contain one of the 4 control views. At any given moment, sectionA can have controlView4 while sectionB can have controlView2. This works perfectly.
The problem with this is SectionA cannot have ControlView1 while SectionB has ControlView1 simultaneously. This leads to undesirable behavior. For example, if SectionA currently has ControlView1 while SectionB has ControlView4 (which will wrap around to ControlView1 on the next toggle), than the next time I toggle SectionB's active ControlView, SectionA's ControlView will simply disappear. (presumably because UIKit implicitly removes it from SectionA's subviews when I add it as a SectionB's subview.)
So, there is some default behavior of UIView that isn't ideal for this modular scheme I wish to implement. That being said, is there a way to achieve what I want without deviating to far afield from iOS best practices and sane code design?
First, I would want to have a different type of view controller for each type of view. Then, each time I wanted a view in a section, I would create its matching controller and have it take over that container area. If the four sections are then displaying multiple copies of the same view, they each have their own controller to keep them organized.
Assuming you have your data model separate from your views and controllers, there should be no extra complexity.
I need to create a simple list of items on a window in OSX.
Coming from C# background I am looking for a corresponding version of a List ,
A simple control in which all items are added in only one column and vertical order and that's pretty much it. I saw NSTableView in the library but it seems to be a more fancy control with multiple columns like a listview in C#,
Is it the one I need to modify the properties to simplify or is there a simpler control for what I need ?
Thanks,
The NSTableView should be fine for what you want. You can change how it is set up, but usually it just lists things in a single row, vertical format. NSTableView may have more options, but if you just don't use them, everything should be fine.
If there is another reason you don't want to use NSTableView let me know.
Good luck.
I’m starting to develop my first full-blown Cocoa application containing a view which I would like to behave (and look) similar to Automator’s AMWorkflowView.
The basic features I’d like to achieve:
Positioning of subviews
Display of subviews in expanded / collapsed states
Multiple selection
Drag and drop
In order to get accustomed to Cocoa, I started with a custom NSView which mainly served as a container for the custom subviews and handled their positioning and multiple selection.
The subviews are also subclasses of NSView, and contain a variable amount of views themselves, like buttons, labels and popup menus, and therefore can have different heights.
This worked quite well, but before going on, I want to make sure to have everything neat and tidy according to the MVC pattern.
I suspect that there already is a class in Cocoa that facilitates the implementation of a view container, like maybe NSCollectionView.
It seems that there is no (easy) way to display differently sized views in an NSCollectionView, though. Should I continue implementing my custom NSView (probably using an NSArrayController for selection and sorting support), or are there better ways to go?
Any help is much appreciated
Unfortunately the answer is you'll have to roll your own. NSCollectionView does not allow for variable-sized items (which also rules out expanded/collapsed states).
For a limited number of items, you can accomplish this rather easily (you just need a container view that arranges the subviews properly when asked to layout, then you need to make sure you re-layout when things change). For many subviews, however, you'll need to take care to be as efficient as possible. This can start with laying out as little as possible (only those "after" the resized view, for example) and get as complex as caching a visual representation of a prototype view, drawing the cached images (fast!) for all but the view being edited, and only using/positioning a "real" view for the view being edited.
Drag and drop works the same as it always has, but none of the above accounts for the pretty animation NSCollectionView gives you. :-) It's fast and beautifully-animated precisely because all the subviews are uniform (so the layout calculations are fast and simple). Once you add irregular sizes, the problem becomes significantly more complicated.
The bottom line: If you need variably-sized views, NSCollectionView will not work and you'll need to roll your own or find someone else's shared code, but performance and beautiful animation will not be easy.
I want to build a Cocoa App with a list of entries very similar to the ToDo list of Things.app (see the screencast). The question is whether I should use
a TableView,
a CollectionView or
a WebView.
I think it could work with all of them, but which one suits the following requirements best?
have a list of entries -> 1 column & many rows
reordering with drag & drop
select single entries & use keys for actions like delete
open up an entry: the row should expand to show more input fields
customized look: rounded corners, shadow, background gradient
So far my research says that the TableView has most of the functionality, but is harder to customize in its appearance, the CollectionView doesn't have drag & drop (right?) but is easy to design and the WebView would take much effort to not hurt the user experience and I can't bind my model directly to input fields.
What pros and cons am I missing and what would you recommend to use?
A WebView doesn't make sense. You might as well create a web application if you use a WebView. An NSCollectionView is more for grid like data, like TV listings per hour.
NSTableView is the only one that makes sense in this case. I've implemented all 5 bullet points with with an NSTableView without issue. You need to extend NSTableView and do some custom drawing for the customized look. That's the hardest part.
open up an entry: the row should expand to show more input fields
You need an outline view. A table view is for flat lists.
Note that NSOutlineView is a subclass of NSTableView, so all the table-view features work on an outline view as well.
There are people who've done this already. One that I've used successfully is by Matteo Bertozzi and is available here: http://th30z.netsons.org/2009/03/cocoa-sidebar-with-badges-take-2/ It might take a bit of massaging to get it to work properly (especially if you need complex drag-and-drop behavior), but for basic functionality, such as getting the section titles and items in the list, it works excellently.
Edit: This has come up before and is a common question on the cocoa-dev email list. Here are some other options.
Just took a look at Things.app itself using "F-script anywhere".
They've used a subclass of NSTableView called "DetailTableView" which presents the condensed todo items. Collapsed todo items are implemented using a custom cell called "ToDoCell", but the expanded look you get when editing is interesting. In that case they've got a custom view called "ToDoEditView" which is inserted as a subview of the DetailTableView when required. I suspect this editing view is temporarily added as a subview in the correct location and the corresponding row of the tableview gets resized temporarily while it is present.
All pretty speculative .. I'd love to know the details of how this was done. It's an awesome UI.
I'm approaching the very same problem in my app (with one big list similar to the Things todo list) and I think a table view would make a lot of sense here.
The trick is having your cells ("rows") expand when double-clicked. That's about all the progress I've made so far.