Learning iOS Programming, 2nd Edition

Chapter 6. Other View Controllers

Now that we’ve discussed the UITableView and UINavigationController (as well as their associated classes and views) and built an iPhone application using them, you’ve actually come a long way toward being able to write applications on your own. With these classes under your belt, you have the tools to attack a large slice of the problem space that iOS applications normally address.

In this chapter, we’ll look at some of the other view controllers and classes that will be useful when building your applications: simple two-screen views (utility applications), single-screen tabbed views (tab bar applications), view controllers that take over the whole screen until dismissed (modal view controllers), and a view controller for selecting video and images (image picker view controller). We’ll also take a look at the Master-Detail Application template and see how it is implemented differently on the iPhone (using a UINavigationController) than on the iPad (using a UISplitViewController).

Utility Applications

Utility applications perform simple tasks: they have a one-page main view and another window that is brought into view with a flip animation. Both the Stocks and Weather applications that ship with the iPhone are examples of applications that use this pattern. Both are optimized for simple tasks that require the absolute minimum of user interaction. Such applications are usually designed to display a simple list in the main view, with preferences and option ...