Re:The iPhone Tab Bar
by dominostars on Tuesday April 12, 2011 @12:37PM
(#2437929)
Just be careful when you do this. It's really easy to get lost and frustrated in an app that doesn't have a consistent tab bar at the bottom. The problem is that you can click a few things, forget the context of what you were doing, and not have an easy way give you some context (the selected tab) or start over.
That being said, Apple does use that structure in the iTunes app when you're playing a song. However, from that view you cannot push anymore view controllers: the back button will always take you back to a screen showing the tab bar.
Re:The iPhone Tab Bar
by bricestacey on Tuesday April 12, 2011 @01:15PM
(#2438126)
I doubt Apple would suggest that structure as it easily breaks the back button as the article demonstrates. It's very frustrating, especially in Twitter where you can get rather deep to suddenly not be able to retrace your steps.
Yes, this is the thing I like least about Twitter. I feel like I'm navigating two very different hierarchies at once. Even after years of using it I'm still uncomfortable.
I'd actually recommend to go through Apple's HIG before trying do things differently.
I've tried news:yc but was not happy with it's UI :(
Agreed. I tried news:yc out for the first time yesterday and wound up deleting the app pretty quickly. The toolbar at the bottom was probably the biggest thing other I didn't like. It just felt wrong.
I can't fix it without any help: I want to make something that's a pleasure to use. If you have improvements or even just issues with the choices I've made, could you submit an issue so I can fix them?
I'll reinstall on the simulator and make a few notes for you later today.
However, when testing the app, I found this was rarely useful in practice, and completely not worth stealing the bottom pixels of the screen where a real toolbar could go. So I switched to Twitter for iPhone style, with the navigation bar as the "top level" element and the tab bar shown only at the root level.
Might not work for all apps, but I think Apple should try to suggest that structure as well, since it does make more sense than their "tab bar always visible" design for at least some apps.