Question

I’ve got a fairly intricate IOS application with icons, tables, text fields, etc spanning across over 20 different view controllers. I built the entire application in portrait mode, and have of course realized that things look screwy when in landscape.

For the really simple screens I’ve had little issues using autolayout’s constraints to accommodate any orientation changes. However, when there are multiple (5+) items on the screen I’ve found it incredibly hard to use constraints to manage everything. In fact some views look like they need the entire layout transformed to flow well.

Is there a better alternative to constraints? My only other thought is to make duplicate views, one for portrait and one for landscape. Then I can just switch on the deviceOrientationChange listener.

Answer 1

You can always switch off constraints by selecting the xib/storyboard file and unchecking Use Autolayout. To do this only for the more complicated views, I think breaking out into separate xibs is feasible.

Also, sometimes landscape really calls for a complete rearrangement of the view (or even adding / hiding certain elements). You should not shy away from defining separate views for this, with or without xib documents.