How to drag a view inside UIScrollView with scrolling near edges?

Question

I'm trying to create some sort of timeline view like in video editors: media elements in a row, which are UIView's. I can successfully drag these views inside currently visible part of scroll view using UIScrollView touch events like touchesBegan and touchesMoved. I want to scroll the scroll view once subview is dragged to one of the scroll view edges. The best I can think of now is to create a timer that will scroll the view while user holds the subview with the finger near scroll view edge.

There's a lot of questions here on the same topic, but I was unable to find one that covers scrolling.

Is there a good way to do this? Should I use gesture recognizers instead?

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

Actually what you want IS a timed event. As soon, as the user is at the edge of the scrollview, you start a timer, which regularly increases the contentOffset. If you don't like your animation results (i guess you're using setContentOffset:animated:?), just try another timing and distance of animation.. I guess you have to try some different settings. What I would try first is 1px at a time. Perhaps every 0.3 second?

If that doesn't work you could also try another "extreme". Start a single animation, when the user reaches the edge, which animates the contentOffset until the end of the contentSize. But over a large timespan so the movement is slow. If the user stops dragging, or moves out of the edge, stop the animation at the current position. That would even be a solution without a timer, because the animation would be your timer itself.