Question

Apple’s tab bar controller has a lot of limitations. One important limitation is that you can’t modify the tab bar in a rejection safe mode. My tab bar has a simple sliding movements and it’s multi row.
For those reasons I decided to build a TBVC from the beginning; everything seems to work correctly, but I’m really messing around with rotation. Every time that I change orientation main view frames are changed.

Here is my hierarchy from top to the container view:
-MainView–contains–>TabBarView+containerView
The containerView is the view used to contain views loaded from the other controllers.
Here is the -loadView method of my CustomTabBaViewController

- (void)loadView
{
    UIView *theView=[[UIView alloc]initWithFrame:[[UIScreen mainScreen]bounds]];
    theView.autoresizingMask=UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth;
    theView.backgroundColor=[UIColor greenColor];

    containerOfControllersView=[[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:theView.bounds];
    containerOfControllersView.backgroundColor=[UIColor blueColor];
    containerOfControllersView.autoresizingMask=UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth;
    [theView addSubview:containerOfControllersView];

    ideoloTabBar=[[IdeoloTabBar alloc]initWithNumberOfControllers:[controllers count]];
    [theView addSubview:ideoloTabBar];
    self.view=theView;
    [theView release];
    
}

When I set a new view from another controller I use this method:

-(void)setCurrentViewWithView:(UIView*)theView{
    if ([[self.containerOfControllersView subviews] count]>0) {
        UIView *tagView=[self.containerOfControllersView viewWithTag:555];
        tagView.tag=0;
        [tagView removeFromSuperview];
    }
    theView.tag=555;
    theView.autoresizingMask=UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth;
    theView.frame=[[UIScreen mainScreen]applicationFrame];
    [self.containerOfControllersView addSubview:theView];
    [self.view bringSubviewToFront:ideoloTabBar];
}

As you can see the views from other view controllers are applied using the applicationFrame.

When I rotate the device happens something wrong, the mainview not only is resized according to the new orientation but also moved by 20px (status bar size) to the botton, thus leaving a gap between the status bar and the container view. Since I gave the mainview the screen bounds I can’t understand with it should be moved.

UPDATE

I’m trying a different approach so I’ve modified the loadView like that:

- (void)loadView
{
    [super loadView];
    containerOfControllersView=[[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:self.view.bounds];
    containerOfControllersView.backgroundColor=[UIColor blueColor];
    containerOfControllersView.autoresizingMask=UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth;
    self.view.backgroundColor=[UIColor greenColor];
    [self.view addSubview:containerOfControllersView];
    ideoloTabBar=[[IdeoloTabBar alloc]initWithNumberOfControllers:[controllers count]];
    [self.view addSubview:ideoloTabBar];
}

And in the setCurrentViewWithView:(UIView*)theView I’ve modified the line with

theView.frame=self.view.bounds;

instead of using the applicationFrame.

NOW:

On iPhone when I try to load a modalView it cuts about 40px at the bottom
On iPad when I try to load a modalView it lefts 20px at the bottom, because 20px are under the status bar but wantsFullScreen is NO.

UPDATE 2

It seems that the presentModalViewController should be called from the root view controller. I will create a protocol and an abstract UIViewController subclass to implement it an load it correctly.

Any suggestion? work around?

Answer 1

It has been a while since I’m using my custom TabBarViewController with disappearing tabbar and it seems to work properly both on iPad and iPhone.
The main problem that I had was due to an incorrect assignment to the content view frame and probably to a wrong assumption that modalVC were loaded from the current view controller.
First point: the content view should use the bounds of the main view, here is a part of the loadView method of the Root View Controller:

[super loadView];
containerOfControllersView=[[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:self.view.bounds];

Second:before add as a subview a view of a view controller remark to it that its frame should have the same bounds of its new parent view.

    theView.frame =self.view.bounds;

Third: modal view controllers should be loaded from the root view controller or the will never have correct size. That’s why I’ve implemented a base abstract class for each view controllers that inherit a protocol that manage the presetation and dismissing of modal viewcontrollers.
Hope this helps someone else.
Andrea