Introduction

MSNavigationPaneViewController was written by Eric Horacek for Monospace Ltd.

MSNavigationPaneViewController is a container view controller that handles the presentation of two overlaid child view controllers. The "pane" view can moved with a swipe gesture to reveal the "master" view below. This interface paradigm easily enables the navigation seen in Facebook, Path, and many others.

There are a number of great reasons to use MSNavigationPaneViewController over of the many other similar overlaid view controller classes:

• Simplicity – This class was written with an emphasis on simplicity. Its interface is about as simple as they come, and is easy to extend.
• Pane Swiping – You can swipe the pane to reveal the master view, and there's a nice bounce animation when the navigation pane finishes sliding.
• Styling – There are various appearance types, animations, and open directions available to customize the visual style.
• Easy Integration – It doesn't require for you to subclass your pane or master view controllers to add them as child view controllers.
• Animations – When a new pane view controller is set using the setPaneViewController:animated:completion: method, it is first animated off to the right, replaced, and then animated back to the left. This prevents a jarring "pop-in" effect when a new pane view controller replaces the current view.
• Containment APIs – It uses the UIViewController containment APIs introduced in iOS 5, so you can rest assured that there's no hackiness going on to get nice overlaid view controllers.

To really get a good feel for it, you should run the MSNavigationPaneViewController example on device—otherwise it's difficult to get a decent idea of how the swiping gestures are implemented.

Examples

Two examples for MSNavigationPaneViewController are included in the "Example" directory within Examples.xcworkspace:

• Example.xcodeproj – No Storyboards or Nibs
• Storyboard Example.xcodeproj – Use with Storyboards

The example projects depend on PRTween, which is included as a git submodule. To install, run the following:

$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update

Open Directions

• Left (MSNavigationPaneOpenDirectionLeft) – Default open direction. The navigation pane opens from the left. A left-right swipe can also reveal the master view.

• Top (MSNavigationPaneOpenDirectionTop) – The navigation pane opens from the top. A top-bottom swipe can also reveal the master view.

 

Appearance

There are a few types of appearance available for MSNavigationPaneViewController. They each change some aspect of the visual style of the pane view dragging. The appearance type of the navigation pane is set via the appearanceType property. The possible types are as follows:

• Parallax (MSNavigationPaneAppearanceTypeParallax) – Scrolls the master view in from the right as the pane view is dragged.
• Zoom (MSNavigationPaneAppearanceTypeZoom) – Zooms the master view in from an inset state as the pane view is dragged.
• Fade (MSNavigationPaneAppearanceTypeFade) – Fades the master view from an alpha of 1.0 to 0.0 as the pane view is dragged.

Reveal Width

To change the distance that the pane view snaps open to, set:

navigationPaneViewController.openStateRevealWidth = 100.0; // Or whatever width you'd like.

Touches

Forwarding Touches

To forward touches through views that require a swipe/pan gesture so that the MSNavigationPaneViewController doesn't intercept them, simply add their Class to touchForwardingClasses:

[navigationPaneViewController.touchForwardingClasses addObject:UISwitch.class];

Both UISlider and UISwitch are included by default.

Disabling Pane Dragging

To disable dragging of the pane and prevent MSNavigationPaneViewController from intercepting touches, set

navigationPaneViewController.draggingEnabled = NO;

Requirements

Requires iOS 5.0, ARC, and the QuartzCore Framework.

Contributing

Forks, patches and other feedback are welcome.

License

Copyright (c) 2012-2013 Monospace Ltd. All rights reserved.

This code is distributed under the terms and conditions of the MIT license.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.