7.5. Popover and modal view controllers

Technically, a modal view refers to a temporary view that’s placed on top of all the elements of an existing view and then later dismissed. A modal view controller is a view controller that manages such a modal view. The iPhone camera is an example of a view controller that has been presented modally.

The popover view is a very lightweight view intended to display data in a specific area. In contrast to a modal view, the popover view doesn’t consume the entire screen; rather, it’s displayed as a context menu. In the previous example, the split view controller project template gave you a popover view for free when the device was in portrait mode.