XIB and Storyboard Files

In this article, i want to talk a bit about working with user interfaces in Elements for Cocoa.

As you know, the Cocoa compiler is a native compiler for the Objective-C runtime, meaning that it works directly with the classes provided by Apple's Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks. This extends from low-level classes such as NSString or NSArray to the high-level visual components based around NSView (Mac) and UIView (iOS).

One common way for Mac and (especially) iOS apps to work with UI is to simply create the necessary views and controls that make up an app's UI from code. But sooner or later, especially when dealing with more complex or sophisticated user interfaces, you will want to use the visual designer. This works on the same principles, whether you are using Xcode/Objective-C or Elements.

Mac and iOS interfaces are designed in Interface Builder, which as of version 4 of Xcode is directly integrated into the Xcode IDE, and when working with Elements, that is where you will work with your interfaces, getting the same experience and the same power and flexibility of UI design that developers using Objective-C get.

There are two file formats used for designing UI on Apple's platform – the older XIB format and the newer Storyboard format. The principles for dealing with these files are similar, and for the sake of simplicity we often refer to "XIB files" in places where both XIBs and Storyboards are covered.

• What are XIB Files?
• How are Storyboard Files different than XIBs?

Terminology: XIB vs. NIB?

This section talks about XIB files, but many of the methods for working with XIB files all mention NIBs. What's up with that?

XIBs are a newer, XML based format that is used for the UI at design time. When you compile your app, the XIB files are converted to binary NIB files for you, and those binary versions of the files are embedded into your app. All the APIs working with these files predate the new format (and, at runtime, only work with the older NIB format), that's why all the method names refer to NIB, not XIB. When you pass around names, you never need to (or should) specify the file extension anyway, so this is a distinction that you can largely ignore (unless you want to go spelunking into your .app bundle).