Question

For this question, I don’t require a full explanation of all code, but helping me get insight into the process for achieving this result would be very helpful! Some information sources that will lead me to where I want to be.
Don’t hesitate to give your opinion or make suggestions on how you would make it better in case you have better ideas – We just want to jump off the regular photo album system.
In the added screenshot I have added a painted image that makes the purpose clear.

1. Albums are created by tapping the “+” sign. (This shows a popup window in which the user can tag a bar/event to which the picture applies; the bar/event profile picture will appear on the album cover).
2. Newly taken pictures should appear in a separate band on the screen. They will float there until the user drags and drops them into an album. Note that the picture is also taken from within the app (using the native camera of the smartphone).
3. When the user added them to an album that was tagged, they will also be displayed automatically in the gallery of the tagged bar/event profile. (Of course in the app, personal profiles will be available as well).

Which technologies / workflow would you advise me?
What I need to create now is just an empty shell for the app that demonstrates the visual workflow (the data flows are not important at this point).
I have read about some libraries such as three20 or UIImagePicker, I don’t know if they are easy to customize towards our needs.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I cannot comment on the likes of Three20 as I have never actually used them.

One method I can suggest, is using a number of scrollviews. Based on your example, you would require 2 individual scrollviews. (For ease lets call them AlbumsSV and PicturesSV).

The AlbumsSV would dynamically load content, based on your backing store. One approach I have used in the past, is to load custom views into a scroll view, as this allows for maximum control, you can specify any requirements as properties of the view (i.e Primary key etc), also you can load a ‘preview image’ based on the data held in your data store.
Assuming you always want the ability to add new items to be last element added to the AlbumsSV, then you can simply add another custom view to the AlbumsSV after all other items have processed.

PicturesSV would simply load content based upon what is in the users camera roll. Again I would recommend using a custom view, as you can set properties such as FileURL etc on the custom view, this will aid when it comes to dragging items into a specific album.

Hope this helps 🙂