On a screen with a tab container and 4 views, I’m laying out a simple design that consists of a Table, a user input Textfield, 3 labels for results and a Button.
After I got things sort of where they needed to be, I decided to perform some fine-tuning of the layout. I selected one of the labels and moved it to the right by one Shift-Right Cursor and All of the labels moved to the right. I then tried to move the selected label back and all of the labels snapped to the right edge of the view. I then tried to sort them out and the TextField decided to jump off the view to the left. I used Cmd-Z to try and undo the mess and the TextField completely disappeared from the layout editor (it was still in the hierarchy and none of its position properties had changed).
I don’t even know where to start in reporting this for trouble shooting. All I can think of is doing a screen capture so I’m not the only witness…
Initially I thought so too on the first attempts with iOS, but then I realized I had to change my way of creating the layout. Instead of putting a lot of controls roughly on a view and rearranging them later, I check for each one that the auto layout constraints are exactly like I wish. When setting up some buttons in a vertical line for example, I make sure the first one is anchored left, right or whereever I want it in relation to the view, and the following ones are locked on the first button left and width with a standard offset. This way I can move the whole group by moving the first one without problems.
But yes, it takes some time to get accustomed to this.
Auto Layout is definitely finicky. Like Ulrich, I’m starting to place the control and then look at the Auto Layout constraints, first, to see if they make sense. I’d say maybe 20% of the time it guesses properly.
You see, the problem is that sometimes it’s right and sometimes it’s wrong. I’ve not seen much repeatability. Top and Left is usually okay but right/width and bottom/height are often confused.
Exactly what I’m seeing. I can do the same steps 4 times and get 3 different results in the combination of settings depending on whether I just drop a control, try to position it with the guides, or position it with the cursor keys.