Question

I’ve got a PSD I need to match—buttons just so, etc, etc. Would it be best to:

1. place things as carefully as possible in the storyboard interface (are there tricks to this?)
2. just create the buttons/graphics/labels in code (losing much of the storyboard niftiness), or
3. place things somewhat carefully, give them ids to be referenced programmatically, and adjust them in code (thus duplicating some effort?)
4. place things somewhat carefully, then edit the storyboard xml manually?

For my purposes, 1. would be ideal, but … are there tricks to this? I can make careful guides, slices, etc, in photoshop. Storybuilder has occasionally helpful snap-tos, but I see no rulers beyond the (5px?) grid…which requires some faith (and careful adjustment of where the uiviews are, some wiggle due to xcode’s dropshadows, ….

Leaning towards 4….

Answer 1

I’ve been doing option 4 (place things somewhat carefully, then edit the storyboard xml manually), and it seems to be working very well. Xcode will reload the storyboard while it’s open and you can see the objects update. Just be sure to sync (save when you’re done editing in either, load before you start editing in either).

The only real caveat so far: if you copy/paste chunks, be sure to give them unique ids, or Xcode will start crashing (“continue” works well enough, but you also won’t be able to do a new build until you fix those—though it does at least give you a helpful error if you dig in).