iPhone Testing

This article in the iOS Developer Librarty shows that several properties of controls dedicated to improving the display behavior arrived in IOS 6

  • auto-kerning
  • minimumScaleFactor (specifies the smallest multiplier for the current font size that yields an acceptable font size to use when displaying the label’s text. If you specify a value of 0 for this property, the current font size is used as the smallest font size. The default value of this property is 0.)
  • preferredMaxLayoutWidth (affects the size of the label when layout constraints are applied to it. During layout, if the text extends beyond the width specified by this property, the additional text is flowed to one or more new lines, thereby increasing the height of the label.)

When testing a localized UI, if you find overlapping or truncated strings, before deciding to shorten the translation you should:

  1. Verify that you tested in IOS 6 or above.
  2. Verify that the developers have made the best use of the properties that can be applied to controls or if they cannot be improved to make sure they resize themselves to fit the text and wrap automatically.

Because of all the above properties allowing controls to adapt themselves to the text to display by automatically changing the font size, kernel, control size etc., and since the fonts are proportional it makes no sense to provide the maximum length in characters as a string constraint.

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