how to add static elements to UICollectionViewController or make them share the same screen with it

Question

What I want to accomplish:

I'm designing a simple game's main screen. On the bottom half of the screen I want it to contain a collection view presenting a list of levels to choose from (long list, horizontally scrollable, nothing fancy - so it may be handled by a standard flow layout). On the top half of the screen I want to have a bunch of static, non-scrollable elements like an image or a label with game title, a static button leading to the credits page, a text field to enter user name etc.

The problem:

As the focus of this design seems to center around a collection view, I'm trying to use a UICollectionViewController in my storyboard to handle this. However, when I drag UICollectionViewController into my storyboard, it seems to always occupy full screen. I can't find a way to shrink it down nor to drag & drop any button or labels onto it.

The question:

How can I accomplish such design as described above (collection view occupying only part of the screen, the other part being occupied by some static, non scrollable controls)?

Should I:

1. provide static buttons inside flow layout's header or footer section? (but then I'd have to make them "sticky", so they don't scroll with the rest of the content
2. subclass flow layout and implement static buttons as layout's decoration views
3. create custom container controller with two sections, one with UICollectionViewController, second with a plain view controller with a bunch of static buttons
4. Do not use UICollectionViewController, but instead use a plain UIViewController and handle collection data source and delegate "manually" (it seems as a lot of unnecessary work)
5. maybe I just miss some simple way to drag&drop buttons over UICollectionViewController in XCode's IB (or to configure)
6. any other way to do it?

Please note that: 1. I'm complete iOS newbie, may miss some very obvious solution 2. Apart of sharing the same screen all of my components are very standard, I don't need any custom layouts or behaviours for my collection view or buttons - so I'd like to know whats the cleanest and simplest way to do this (some of potential solutions I proposed above seem like they may work, but for me sound like an overkill to implement such a simple screen)

Answer 1

I think you need something like in the following figure

The bottom view(Thumbnail view) is a UICollectionView created using UICollectionViewController.

What I did is

1. Created a UICollectionViewController subclass and add its view(ie collectionView) as the sub view of the mainViewController.
2. CollectionView is managed by its controller class. I named it as SlideViewController

SlideViewController.h

 #import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

 @interface SlideViewController : UICollectionViewController

 @end   

SlideViewController.m

 #import "SlideViewController.h"
 #import "CollectionViewCell.h"


 @implementation SlideViewController

 - (id)initWithNibName:(NSString *)nibNameOrNil bundle:(NSBundle *)nibBundleOrNil
 {
   self = [super initWithNibName:nibNameOrNil bundle:nibBundleOrNil];
  if (self) {
    // Custom initialization
   }
return self;
}

-(id)init
{
  UICollectionViewFlowLayout *layout = [[UICollectionViewFlowLayout alloc]init];
  self = [super initWithCollectionViewLayout:layout];
   if (self) {
    layout.itemSize = CGSizeMake(100, 100);
    layout.sectionInset = UIEdgeInsetsMake(5, 10, 5, 10);
    layout.scrollDirection = UICollectionViewScrollDirectionHorizontal;
  }
 return self;
}

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
  [super viewDidLoad];
  self.view = self.collectionView;
//self.collectionView.autoresizingMask = UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth|UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight;
self.collectionView.backgroundColor = [UIColor orangeColor];
[self.collectionView registerClass:[CollectionViewCell class] forCellWithReuseIdentifier:@"cell"];

}  

How to use

In mainViewController

 self.slideViewController= [[[SlideViewController alloc]init]autorelease];
 self.slideViewController.view.frame = CGRectMake(20, 300, 280, 200);
 [self.view addSubview:self.slideViewController.collectionView];