Crafting a Seamless Tab Control Experience for Mobile Apps
When it comes to mobile app development, a well-designed tab control is essential for providing users with a seamless navigation experience. As a mobile app developer, you’re likely familiar with the importance of creating a tab control that renders perfectly on both iOS and Android platforms. In this article, we’ll dive into the process of developing a React Native component that achieves just that.
The Goal: A Platform-Agnostic Tab Control
Our objective is to create a tab control component that meets Material Design guidelines on Android and mirrors the design of segmented control on iOS 13. We’ll focus on developing a stateful component that stores the selected index and defines a function to change the selected index, invoking the passed onChange callback.
The Demo App
Take a look at the animated GIF below, which demonstrates the tab control in action. We’ve broken down the example to its essentials, focusing on the key aspects of developing such a component.
The TabControl Component: Interface and Implementation
The TabControl component’s interface requires an array of values to be rendered as tab labels, along with an onChange prop that’s called when the user taps on a tab. The callback function receives the label of the active tab.
We’ve utilized React Native’s Platform API to render the component differently on both mobile platforms. A Boolean variable (isIos) is used to perform platform checks throughout the component. The wrapperStyles object defines different style properties, depending on the platform.
SegmentedControl: Rendering Tabs in a Platform-Agnostic Container
The SegmentedControl component is responsible for rendering a Tab component for every entry in the tabValues array. We’ve passed the tab label and press callback function to the Tab component, along with flags to determine the correct context for rendering tabs differently.
Container: Horizontal Layout Component with Motion Animation on iOS
The Container component renders differently on iOS and Android. On iOS, we’ve used two state objects to manage the animation, utilizing React Native’s animation library, Animated. The animation is updated whenever the active tab changes, moving the active tab indicator component horizontally within 250ms.
Tab: Platform-Agnostic Abstraction
The Tab component renders a Text component with associated styles for both operating systems. If the tab is active, additional styles are added. The container component, OsSpecificTab, is called with the onPress handler and a hint whether this tab is active.
OsSpecificTab, AndroidTab, and IosTab: Platform-Dependent Implementations
Finally, we’ve implemented platform-dependent tabs using TouchableNativeFeedback on Android and TouchableWithoutFeedback on iOS. We’ve also added a ripple effect to the background prop on Android and a vertical separator element on iOS.
Enhancing the Native User Experience
To further enhance the native user experience, we’ve explored possibilities such as adding haptic touch feedback using Expo Haptics and implementing swipe capabilities on iOS using react-native-gesture-handler.
Technical Hurdles and Future Development
While we’ve successfully developed a tab control component, there are still technical hurdles to overcome. We’ve encountered layering problems with absolute positioning and z-index issues. If you have ideas on how to combine both iOS variants, please share your thoughts in the comments section.
Existing Libraries and Conclusion
During our research, we’ve discovered existing React Native libraries that provide Android-like tabs and/or iOS-like segmented controls. However, none of these libraries offer a native iOS look and feel. We hope that our approach will inspire further development and improvement in this area.
What do you think? Would you find it useful if we developed a library based on the concepts described in this article? Let us know in the comments section.