Sunday, October 27, 2013

Easy UITableView optimizations

Now this may be the most simplistic blog post I write, but I think it's something that every iOS developer should utilize.  UITableView is an incredibly fundamental view in iOS and is used in many many apps.  However, I can't help but notice over and over so many amazing apps out there that use table views but have the jarring effect of not loading the data for the table view's cells' content until the cells are visible.  I want to take this blog entry to address 3 missing pieces for improved table view experience: 1) loading NSURLConnection data while UITableViews scroll, 2) buffering UITableViews so the content loads before it is shown on screen and 3) rendering a network graphic on a background thread so that the UITableView doesn't stutter (with a blocked main thread) when the network graphic is decompressed and rendered.

Smooth Tables Views is easy as 1, 2, 3...