Question

How can I make it so when a tab is selected, the current one is unloaded, and the next one is loaded so only one loaded at a time? Or should I not even do this? I know how to do it with a normal UIViewController as the root VC, but not sure with a UITabBarController. Also, is there a way to animate the transition from one tab to the next? Any help? Thanks!!

EDIT: … If I unload the view controllers, then their icons on the tab bar are gone… maybe I’ll just unload their views..

Answer 1

You cant really manage the UITabBarController unfortunaly so you cant do lazy loading. You can by managining your own TabBar but you said u knew that already,

to manage your own tab bar though all you gotta do is setup a UITabBar with its TabBarItems in a ViewController, then implement the TabBar Delegate protocol, mainly the – tabBar:didSelectItem: method which is called whenever the tabbarItem selection is changed, then based on the item id you can load your new ViewController and release any others
so: Edit: this code goes in your UIViewController

  -(void)addTabBar{
    NSMutableArray* items=[[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
    UITabBarItem *eventsItem= [[UITabBarItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"Events" image:nil   tag:0];
    UITabBarItem *albumItems=[[UITabBarItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"Album" image:nil tag:1]; //the tag is how you tell what was clicked
    [items addObject:homeItem];
    [items addObject:albumItems];
      //MyTabBar is of type UITabBar
    myTabBar=[[UITabBar alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0,411,320,49)];
    [myTabBar setItems:items];
    myTabBar.delegate=self; //you gotta implement the UITabBar delegate protocol
    [myTabBar setSelectedItem:eventItem]; //set the selected item
    [homeItem release];
    [eventsItem release];
    [albumItems release];
    [items release];
   [self.view addSubview:myTabBar]
}

then the protocol method would look something like below
– (void)tabBar:(UITabBar *)tabBar didSelectItem:(UITabBarItem *)item
{
if(item.tag == 0 )
{
//load the ViewController that pertains to this item and release others
}
…etc

}