How do I properly handle rotation of a UIScrollView containing UIImageViews?

Question

I'm developing an image viewer, much like the Photos App.

It's a UIScrollView with paging enabled with images loaded from the internet, so I've adapted portions of the LazyTableImages sample. The Scroll View and each ImageView inside of it have all of their autoresize mask flags set.

When I first observed how resizes were happening during rotation, it looked good, but once I started trying to interact with the scroll view, I realized that I also had to programmatically change the size of the contentView. I did that by implementing didRotateFromInterfaceOrientation: in my view controller.

[self.scrollView setContentSize:CGSizeMake(numberOfImages * portraitWidth, [scrollView bounds].size.height)];

With interaction behaving properly, I then discovered that, if I was viewing the second photo and rotated, portions of both the 1st and 2nd photos would be shown on the screen. I needed to change the contentOffset as well.

I've tried to fix this two ways - both by using the scrollRectToVisible:animated: method of UIScrollView, as well as trying to set the contentOffset property directly. And I've experimented by putting this code in implementations of both the "one-step" and "two-step" responses to changes in Orientation. For example:

-(void)didAnimateFirstHalfOfRotationToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)toInterfaceOrientation {
[self.scrollView setContentOffset:CGPointMake(currentlyViewedPhotoIndex * largeImageHeight,0) animated:YES];

In all cases though, it just looks janky as hell. Either I clearly see the scroll happen, or it just jumps. Uuuuuuuuuuugly! Is there a way to do this so that it behaves exactly like the Photos app does?

Answer 1

What I wound up doing instead - just before rotation starts, hide the UIScrollView and create a UIImageView that contains the currently viewed image. Rotate, that image will rotate all nice and pretty, and when rotation completes remove the ImageView and unhide the Scroll View.

Update - if you're reading this today (anytime after iOS 6), use a UIPageViewController and set transitionStyle to UIPageViewControllerTransitionStyleScroll, for crissakes.

Answer 2

I did something slightly different when faced with the same problem. In willRotateToInterfaceOrientation:duration:, I hide all of the UIScrollView's subviews except for the currently displayed subview, and in didRotateFromInterfaceOrientation: I unhide the subviews.