In my app, I use a UINavigationController to switch between many different UIViewControllers. The only problem is that with one of my views, upon it loading, I have to do lots of customization (both data access and graphics, both of which must be done in code). When the view controller is pushed, the animation is extremely choppy, because the phone is forced to both animate the transition and set up the view at the same time.
Setting up the view after it is loaded is not an option, so is it possible to set it up (there is a method called setupViewDidLoad that has all of the necessary code in it) during allocation before it is pushed/presented?
Edit:
Let me modify my question slightly. I have found that if I present the view controller using [self presentModalViewController:animated:] instead of pushing it with the navigation controller, there is no choppiness. What is the reason for this?
Your best bet is to do this. Set up any code you need in viewWillAppear in your views .m file. If you have to access data remotely you may want to think about creating a data storage class of its own to handle and store that so it can do it whenever - even if the view isn't loaded or hasn't been loaded yet.