Home/ Questions/Q 6606465
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-25T19:23:55+00:00

As the iPad app I am making has been growing its size, it is

  • 0

As the iPad app I am making has been growing its size, it is hard for me to keep track of UI design values. Here, I am talking about values such as a table’s width, background colors, and a title’s font.

I would like to organize all UI design-related values and objects more efficiently.

How do you organize these?

  • Do you #define values in a header file?
  • Do you declare them as global variables or not?
  • Do you put your values one static class?
  • Or do you think not-organizing these values is rather better?

I would like to hear your advice.
Thank you 🙂

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Yes it depends, therefore just some rules of thumb…

    Do you #define values in a header file?

    …in cases where I might want to change this locally only, eg for constants, colors, alignments, button images, … the main reason why I do this however is the documentation it allows by giving the local defines a long explaining name

    Do you declare them as global variables or not?

    …an all my apps I have a MainDataManager Class, that holds all the variables I need globally – for the UI part often I have my own globally used object. This is extremely useful, simplifies the code, and probably one of the most important things I learned early on. might also see here Using Variable of AppDelegate as a Global Variable – question regarding release/retain

    Do you put your values one static class?

    …static classes exist kind of conceptually. Static variables are quite useful when you want to give a method some kind of memory of its own. However, none plays an important role in my UI.

    In general, I like to use IB to layout the screens but set all the button names, labels, texts in the code. Why? Because when I have to localize the app maintaining multiple XIB files (for each language there will be one isolated XIB file to maintain) becomes a real burden even if there is only one single change in the layout.

    All the global constant settings are always kept in GloblDefinitions.h while at the same time I have in my .pch file this entry #import “GlobalDefinitions.h”

    So the combintation of a delegate variable provided globally + GlobalDefinitions.h for constants is my solution.

    • 0