CKSideBarController, a UITabBarController for iPad

It was a pleasure reading through your code.

Since you use ARC, is there any reason you use old retain/assign syntax?

I like this UI style, and clean code. Good work!

We released as somewhat popular iPhone-based "springboard" like clone a while back on GitHub (https://github.com/fieldforceapp/openspringboard) and have since gone on to iOS6 and the iPad. The code isn't anything to be proud of.

For our iPad app, instead of your side bar style, we use a top bar with the ability to slide it down when needed, an hide it when not; the content is wrapped in a UIScrollView of buttons for the various options, using a simple highlight to indicate the selected option. You can find some screenshots on our website or in the app store description of our iPad product.

Two questions for you: how about extending your code for both side-bar and top-bar orientations? And related, can the CKSideBarController be hidden?

This wouldn't be a difficult enhancement. I'd probably add some sort of enum to indicate what edge the bar should be along. Some of the view layout logic would obviously need to change, namely the glow effect would need to rotate and reposition based on what position the bar was in (not a difficult thing, of course). This is not necessarily a high priority for me right now (I'd like to add some customization API for look and feel in the near term).

An optional swipe-to-hide/reveal feature is something I was planning on implementing. Look for that soon!