Strategy for implementing multiple view controllers

My application is for studying. It will have three screens, one for studying (reading), one for reviewing, and one which acts as the main menu (for managing documents and selecting study or review). The main menu will be the first screen when t开发者_如何学Gohe app is loaded.

I am trying to decide on the best approach with regards to what view controllers and views I need.

Approach A: (4 x View Controllers - root, menu, study, review)

This approach has a root view controller with no on-screen controls. It will always contain one of the other view controllers as a subview. For some reason I am attracted to this approach but I have seen no other examples of this so maybe I am being stupid. I am wondering if there is a reason why this is inherently wrong.

Approach B: (3 x View controllers - root (menu), study, review)

In this approach the menu IS the root controller and the other controllers load in subviews of the menu. I think this is more of a standard way of doing things.

I would be grateful to hear any thoughts on which approach is best. I am a newbie to software development. I have worked through a number of books on iOS software development and messed around for a bit and now I am starting my first app for iPad.

Whenever you're determining how to layout your views and controllers, they're very often based on the application flow (from an end user's standpoint). So from your original question I'm not sure I exactly understand the flow- is the user forced to start at the main menu, and then from there is able to toggle between two mutually exclusive views (study & review)? If that's the case, I would recommend using a tab bar controller for the 'Study' and 'Review' views, as it allows for saving states of the views and switching between them without you having to do any extra work (from both of the approaches you described it sounds like you'd largely be recreating this behavior yourself). Then, for the main menu (which I assume is displayed when the app first starts?) You can simply open it modally (note you don't have to animate the opening, so it can instantly appear instead of sliding up from the bottom, and the user will never be the wiser). Once the user selects what they need to select in the main menu, dismiss the modal view and you're ready to go with your 2-tab controller.