@Roman Busyghin: For example, I'm developing a generic application using Cocoa (NSWindows which shows me count of email messages on my server). Do I need to use CALayers too?
For Mac applications, Core Animation can be helpful if you're doing a lot of custom user interface elements. If you're mostly using the built-in views, there are fewer benefits.
On iPhone, it's probably better to use CALayers more liberally to reduce the need to redraw. Again, this isn't something I've compared closely between the platforms, but I remember this topic coming up at WWDC.
I think usage of Core Animation adds a lot of complexity to my code or am I wrong?
If you're creating a custom user interface, Core Animation can substantially simplify your code because it has built-in functionality for things you'd have to otherwise do yourself. It's designed to be easy to get started with, and works very much like other Cocoa frameworks.
But that's only if you've already decided to do custom UI. The simplest approach, of course, is to just use Cocoa's built in views.
by Scott Stevenson — Oct 03
For Mac applications, Core Animation can be helpful if you're doing a lot of custom user interface elements. If you're mostly using the built-in views, there are fewer benefits.
On iPhone, it's probably better to use CALayers more liberally to reduce the need to redraw. Again, this isn't something I've compared closely between the platforms, but I remember this topic coming up at WWDC.
I think usage of Core Animation adds a lot of complexity to my code or am I wrong?
If you're creating a custom user interface, Core Animation can substantially simplify your code because it has built-in functionality for things you'd have to otherwise do yourself. It's designed to be easy to get started with, and works very much like other Cocoa frameworks.
But that's only if you've already decided to do custom UI. The simplest approach, of course, is to just use Cocoa's built in views.