Posts Tagged 'iPhone'

So if you’ve paid any attention to new iOS 6 stuff at all, you’ve probably noticed that this UICollectionView thing sounds remarkably interesting:

A collection view is a way to present an ordered set of data items using a flexible and changeable layout. The most common use for collection views is to present items in a grid-like arrangement, but collection views in iOS are capable of more than just rows and columns. With collection views, the precise layout of visual elements is definable through subclassing and can be changed dynamically. So you can implement grids, stacks, circular layouts, dynamically changing layouts, or any type of arrangement you can imagine…

Yeah? That kinda strains your credulousness a bit, doesn’t it? Let’s look for a second opinion, shall we?

The Awesomest UI Class I’ve Ever Seen

UICollectionView is spectacular. The combination of a clear interface and incredible flexibility make it an absolute masterpiece of API design. The UIKit engineers who designed it have truly outdone themselves. It is by far my favorite feature of the iOS 6 SDK. Make sure to watch WWDC sessions 205 and 219 if you haven’t yet seen them…

“Awesomest”. “Spectacular”. “Masterpiece”. Don’t hold back, tell us how you really feel. How about a third opinion? A fourth?

… Barely containing excitement. ) UICollectionView* stuff is Magic, pure Magic.

… UICollectionView is fucking awesome. It will change the face of iOS apps.

“Pure Magic”. “Fluffily Awesome”. Yes, a concrete degree of enthusiasm can be ascertained there as well. Anyone else?

UICollectionView is possibly the most important enhancement Apple has ever made to iOS’s base control set … Expect to see amazing new UIs in iOS 6 apps that do things with visual data presentation that were never possible before. Expect to see dynamic grids that can be resized, reordered, and visually transformed in imaginative ways…

Well, then. Looks like UICollectionView winds hands down the Industry Achievement Award for “Most Gushing Fanboism Ever Over a Flippin’ API”, indeed. Looks like it’s pretty safe to predict that there’s going to be a lot of people doing nifty stuff with it, and we might as well get a jump on that by collecting the first few introductions to it out of the box here:

First off, if you haven’t got it already, we thoroughly recommend you head over to chez Wenderlich and pick up the iOS 6 By Tutorials book; the two chapters on UICollectionView are worth the price alone if you haven’t been experimenting with it already, and hey there’s 25 other chapters bonus covering pretty much everything significant new there is.

Second off, rather than completely splitting your presentation layer code at iOS 6, you might wish to look into steipete / PSTCollectionView:

Open Source, 100% API compatible replacement of UICollectionView for iOS4.3+

You want to use UICollectionView, but still need to support iOS4/5? Then you’ll gonna love this project. I’ve originally written it for PSPDFKit, my iOS PDF framework that supports text selection and annotations, but this project seemed way to useful for others to to keep it for myself Plus, I would love the influx of new gridviews to stop. Better just write layout managers and build on a great codebase.

The goal is to use PSTCollectionView on iOS 4/5 as a fallback and switch to UICollectionView on iOS6. We even use certain runtime tricks to create UICollectionView at runtime for older versions of iOS. Ideally, you just link the files and everything works on older systems…

Ideally, yes. In practice, no doubt this is a good opportunity for collaboration by us all, yes? (h/t: ManiacDev)

It’s even there for people too cool to use Objective-C:

Xamarin: Introduction to CollectionViews

RubyMotion: RubyMotion gets iOS 6, iPhone 5, debugger

And here’s other intros and tips to get you started … which will no doubt become a longer list in the nearish future:

UICollectionView Example (h/t @romainbriche)

How to Use NSFetchedResultsController with UICollectionView (h/t ManiacDev)

UICollectionView Sample code for iOS 6

A simple UICollectionView tutorial

UPDATES:

Example iOS Source Code Of A Customizable Coverflow Container Using UICollectionView

Beginning UICollectionView In iOS 6: Part 1/2 and Part 2/2

LXReorderableCollectionViewFlowLayout for iOS

Sticky Headers for UICollectionView using UICollectionViewFlowLayout

LXReorderableCollectionViewFlowLayout “Extends`UICollectionViewFlowLayout` to support reordering of cells.”

A Springboard-Like Layout With the UICollectionView Class

UICollectionViewWaterfallLayout “This layout is inspired by Pinterest. It also is compatible with PSTUICollectionView.”

How to Add a Decoration View to a UICollectionView

UICollectionView custom layout tutorial

MagrackCollectionView

Deleting cells from UICollectionView via NSNotification

Pinterest-style UICollectionViewLayout for UICollectionView

RFQuiltLayout “is a subclass of UICollectionViewLayout that positions various sized cells like a mason laying bricks.”

MSCollectionViewCalendarLayout ” is very similar to the “Week” view in the Apple Calendar/iCal app.”

UICollectionView Example with UICollectionViewFlowLayout

Workaround to vanilla UICollectionView+UICollectionViewFlowLayout using non-integral origins.

Custom iOS UICollectionViewLayout Modeled After The iCal App

Putting a UICollectionView in a UITableViewCell

mpospese / IntroducingCollectionViews has several samples from a conference talk.

How To Create A Rotating Image Wheel Using UICollectionView

Creating a Paged Photo Gallery With a UICollectionView

Open Source iOS Control For Easily Creating A Flowing Image Thumbnail Grid View

ASCollectionViewController “makes working with NSFetchedResultsController, UIMenuController and UIRefreshControl easier.”

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In case you haven’t bothered watching WWDC 2012 Session 240, it’s one of the more interesting ones:

Go beyond the basics of rotations and learn best practices for getting maximum performance and smooth transitions between interface orientations. See when and how to use rasterization and snapshotting to create gliding animations, gain insight as to how the render server model works, and understand how some of the built-in apps on iOS get their visual effects.

And in case you haven’t bothered implementing snapshot rotation yet, now there’s a convenient Nimbus class for it:

An object designed to easily implement snapshot rotation.

Snapshot rotation involves taking two screenshots of a UIView: the “before” and the “after” state of the rotation. These two images are then cross-faded during the rotation, creating an animation that minimizes visual artifacts that would otherwise be noticed when rotation occurs.

This feature will only function on iOS 6.0 and higher. On older iOS versions the view will rotate just as it always has.

This functionality has been adopted from WWDC 2012 session 240 “Polishing Your Interface Rotations”.

Come to think of it, have we mentioned NimbusKit before? Hmmm … once in passing. But it’s worth another look if you skipped over it then; seems to be developing nicely. And it’s always refreshing to see an open source project that considers documentation worthwhile, isn’t it now?

h/t: @steipete!

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