Question

I just read a comment saying something like

Yet another reason never to use nibs

Is it such bad practice to use nibs to construct your views in iOS? I think it’s a fine system, enables you to construct views quickly without writing a lot of code. I’ve been working with nibs for a while now and never saw much downsides to their use.

So my question is: should I use nibs or code my views, and why?

Answer 1

I think the statement “never to use nibs” is ridiculous. You just have to know when to use them and when to avoid them. They’re great for complex but static views, where you would waste a lot of time getting the coordinates and sizes right. For dynamic GUIs of course you should use code instead.

However, some people might fear that the GUI is out of their control, if they don’t create it themselves by code and see every detail. But that’s a subjective point.

One sure downside is, that xibs are hard to merge if you use source control. Xib files are actually XML files and when you change something in the GUI, a lot of references are added, removed or changed in the background. This will then result in conflicts that are very difficult to resolve.

Another one might be performance reasons. Loading your GUI from a nib file is slightly slower (in some cases) then creating it directly in code. Some people suggest not to use any nibs for the GUI that has to be loaded at application launch to shorten the launch time. But I’m not sure if there is a significant difference or not.