Ray Wenderlich - New Book: Auto Layout by Tutorials!

Announcing Our New Book
Auto Layout by Tutorials

Auto Layout is Apple’s elegant solution to making your user interfaces flexible and adaptable. It can be daunting to learn to use its true power without someone to guide you.

That’s where Auto Layout by Tutorials comes to the rescue! This book will be your guide as you explore and master the many capabilities of Auto Layout.

Read on to hear from the authors, Libranner Santos and Jayven Nhan on how this book can help you level up your development game:

What are the main pain points this book solves in Auto Layout?

"Auto Layout is a fundamental skill for iOS developers; however, there’s a lot to learn about it and, as with anything else, you’ll likely run into issues.

Our book will help you understand everything you need to know to get started with Auto Layout right away, including how to debug common issues that you might face while working with Auto Layout."

What experience does someone need before they dive into this book?

"All you need to get started is familiarity with basic Xcode navigation and knowledge of basic Swift!"

What can someone accomplish after they've finished your book?

"By the end of our book, you’ll be a pro at creating flexible and adaptable layouts that look good on multiple iOS devices with a single codebase."

How can this book help with a developer's career?

"Being able to engineer flexible and adaptable interfaces is a skill that’s in high demand. Companies want their apps to be screen size-agnostic, so that their app interfaces look beautiful when presented on any device.

Every iOS developer will work with Auto Layout and face Auto Layout problems. By mastering Auto Layout, you will present your team's work in the best light every time and on any device."

Is there anything you found challenging about Auto Layout that you can help the reader with?

"Compiling information into a structured and easy to digest format can be a challenge. You also need to understand size classes so you can take them into account before writing code, and you also need to be able to decipher error logs while debugging issues.

We kept these struggles in mind when writing Auto Layout by Tutorials to make it easier for the reader to overcome those challenges."

In Auto Layout by Tutorials, you'll learn to build fluid, responsive layouts that look great on any device.

How do you use Auto Layout to help you in your own work?

"Auto Layout is my go-to tool when creating user interfaces for iOS applications using UIKit. It’s the standard way of building user interfaces and provides more flexibility than using frames directly, as I used to do before.

Whether I am creating a consumer app or an enterprise app, building adaptive and flexible layouts is a key expectation of high-quality apps, and Auto Layout helps me achieve this."

Can you share a cool tip about Auto Layout with us?

"Stress testing your layouts helps you build flexible and adaptable interfaces for existing and future devices. A simple way to check if your app has flexible and adaptable interfaces is to progressively shrink a view's width to 1. As you do this, see if the layouts are your intended layouts. Then, using the same concept, progressively expand the view's height to an arbitrarily large number, like 5,000, and check your layouts again. Make sure to also do this for the view's height.

Another tip is to try to use trailing and leading anchors, instead of right and left anchors. This way, if you want to add internationalization to your app later on, you won't have to make any changes (unless you have a UI element that should have the same alignment regardless of the language)."

Is there anything else you'd like us to know about Auto Layout by Tutorials?

"Deepening your understanding of Auto Layout will deepen your control over the adaptability and appearance of your layouts. Ultimately, mastering Auto Layout will give your app interfaces the superpower to adapt to any screen size!"