storyboard vs empty application?

[cinek]

Can I use storyboard instead of the empty application templete - or are storyboards just for simple applications?

[Duncan C]

Originally Posted by cinek

Can I use storyboard instead of the empty application templete - or are storyboards just for simple applications?

Storyboards are a totally different way of managing the UI in your application. Instead of having separate XIB files for each view controller, you have a storyboard file that contains the definitions of ALL the view controllers and other objects in your application. Instead of using methods like initWithNibName, there are new storyboard methods to instantiate objects out of the storyboard. (Your app can have more than one storyboard file, but that's uncommon.)

You can create applications of any complexity using storyboards, from single-view apps to apps with dozens of different view controllers and lots of fancy transitions.

Storyboards allow you to create transitions between the different view controllers in your application graphically, without having to write any code. They also enable you to do some other cool tricks like creating static table views and custom cell layouts that make common UI tricks easy.

Storyboards only work in iOS >= 5.0, however. If you want to support older OS versions, you can't use them.

Our company is still getting the hang of storyboards. Overall I like them, but there are some things I still don't understand completely. For example, with XIB files, it's pretty easy to have your view controllers be created at launch-time, and persist for the life of your application. The views might get unloaded in a low memory situation, but the view controllers themselves stick around, and can save state data, so they remember how the user left them.

I haven't figured out how to do that with Storyboards however. The Storyboard-based calls to invoke a view controller always seem to create a new instance of the view controller.

[cinek]

thanks!