Chapter 5

Autorotation and Autosizing

The iPhone and iPad are amazing pieces of engineering. Apple engineers found all kinds of ways to squeeze maximum functionality into a pretty darn small package. One example of this is how these devices can be used in either portrait (tall and skinny) or landscape (short and wide) mode, and how that can be changed at runtime simply by rotating the device. You can see an example of this behavior, which is called autorotation, in iOS's web browser, Mobile Safari (see Figure 5–1).

In this chapter, we'll cover autorotation in detail. We'll start with an overview of the ins and outs of autorotation, and then move on to different ways of implementing that functionality in your apps.

Figure 5–1. Like many iOS applications, Mobile Safari changes its display based on how it is held, making the most of the available screen space.