I'd like to customize my UIToolBar, so the centered button looks something similar to the check-in foursquare button.
I've seen a commercial source code called ALToolBar, wich is similar to the effect I want on my UIToolBar. So in resume, changing the height of a button, and the background of a specific button, if that is the right way to go.
I'm pretty new to iOS, but comfortable enough to dig ideas the community can bring on.
Thanks for your help.
One approach is to just write your own Tabbar/Toolbar instead of using the built-in classes. Subclass UIView and add UIButtons for each item, which you can then customize as you wish.
The downside to this approach is, you loose the "More" functionality, that allows you to drag-and-drop items into the Tabbar, but if you just have 5 or fewer items, that's fine.
Related
What would be the best approach for creating a Window that is semi-transparent, has round corners and an outline around its border and the arrow, but without the the title bar and buttons.
The window will pop up from the Menu Bar when a use clicks on the menu bar icon.
I'm looking to have an effect similar to the "Applications" and "Downloads" windows:
I guess I will need to do the drawing myself. But I'm wondering what's the best way to do this and whether there is anything already built into Cocoa that can minimize the effort? Or maybe a 3rd party project that has already done that (couldn't find anything exactly like that)?
Thanks.
You can create your window with
- (id)initWithContentRect:(NSRect)contentRect styleMask:(NSUInteger)windowStyle backing:(NSBackingStoreType)bufferingType defer:(BOOL)deferCreation
with a style-mask of NSBorderlessWindowMask which will give an unadorned window. Its how the Dock does its mechanics too.
Note that you must init with this style , you can't change an already init'ed windows style.
Place a custom NSView via the contentView accessor with your desired background custom drawing at the top of the windows view stack.
You might need also to setOpaque to NO
What you are looking for has been done a lot. Too much really.
The classes you want to look into are as follows.
NSStatusItem
This is something that appears in the status bar section of the menu bar to the right side.
NSMenu
If you want this from a menu in the application menus, you'll need to do some clever things with views in menus.
NSWindow
As the other poster notes a borderless window is one way to achieve this.
NSPopover
This is another way. Combined with the above, a fancy technique is to use a clear window called a cover window then, when clicking on the menu or status menu, invoke a popover from a point below that in the clear cover window.
That should be enough to get you started with what you should look into.
Beyond that, peruse the Mac App Store and also look at cocoacontrols.com and GitHub.
I am making an app. It is kind of a hide and go seek. I was thinking about sectioning off separate areas and having the app say something different as to where you touched the screen. It will give you clues to where on the screen you need to touch next. So, these are my questions:
What is the easiest way? Would I want to make a grid of roundrectbuttons-placing each one and making an outlet for each - or can I make grid of buttons some other on the screen.If I place each button I will have a 9x12 of buttons making 108 buttons. Then I need to have a way to choose a random button as to where the location of the thing is question is. Would I use buttons at all or is there an easier way?
108 buttons is far too many to place in a xib :) If you wanted to use buttons then I would create them programatically in viewDidLoad in your controller.
Hoewever, I wouldn't use buttons at all!
I would use a TapGestureRecognizer attached to your background view. When you recieve a tap, take a look at where it was (use locationInView:self.view) and use that to work out what to do with the press.
I'm working on an app that needs many TabBar Items (6 or 7). I don't think users like to click the "More" button on TabBars, so I'm wondering how to make my own TabBar that slides from left to right, so one can easily access all the buttons on the tabbar without pressing "More."
Thanks!
I agree with the other answer that it's a bad idea from a design standpoint.
Nevertheless, the technical answer is that you can simply embed a UITabBar in a UIScrollView. If you set the tab bar's width and the scroll view's contentSize appropriately, the tab bar will be scrollable. You will probably want to turn off bouncing and scroll indicators.
I didn't try it with a UITarBarController.
Opinions on whether this is a good idea or not aside
A simple carousel should be fairly simple to implement from scratch using a UIScrollView with UIButton subviews. which will provide all the scroll mechanics for you
As a sample idea.
A UISCrollView which spans the width of the device.
N buttons across the scroll content pane
Restrict scroller to horizontal scrolling.
Provide selected and unselected images for the buttons
Create glue code to ensure only one button is selected at a time (like Radio buttons)
But I do agree with the other posters that its a bad UI idea. Id be thinking UIToolbar for this.
Apart from considerations about UX and UI guidelines, a way you can implement such thing is implementing a tab bar from scratch. You can even find a tutorial here for iOS5.
Actually, implementing a tab bar and a tab bar controller is not difficult as it may appear at first sight, but given the effort involved, you could also ask you what value this kind of design add to your app and to the user experience.
In any case, if you decide to go for this path (a scrollable tab bar), I would suggest to make it such that the user cannot be misguided into thinking it's a standard tab bar.
That's against about every design guideline ever written for iOS.
(I know that Gift Plan for iOS has a scrollable tab bar, but it never hides items from the user.)
The HOW to do it has been accepted,
MOBILE DESIGN PATTERNS are not cast in concrete - it is about what is appropriate for YOUR app.
It used to be that web pages scrolled vertically and side-scrolling was frowned on.
But the tablet has been a game changer - people EXPECT to swipe side to side.
A comment on one case when scrolling tab view is actually highly appropriate ..
(a) Look at xFeed in App Store
This has 10+ topics like News Sports ... , easy to scroll to topic and click takes you to RSS feeds under it.
This is truly convenient for user, and in my opinion appropriate.
The alternative is to go back and forth between a menu of some kind and the target view - which could be a 2nd option, but from a quick browse experience this is good.
(b) USA Today is another example - even on its main website, has the < > arrows to scroll between topics or you can click on tabs at top. Admittedly the tabs themselves don't scroll, but you get the idea. The entire site, and the mobile experience for USA Today is strongly optimized around side swipeing between chapters.
(c) Presentations and content sites have come to be side scrolling as well.
(d) FINALLY on a Human Happiness viewpoint! People WANT TO TOUCH and PLAY with their mobile stuff. Not just tap!
So mobile touch is quite happy here. One more thing to swipe and slide :)
Here is a link of project with custom scrollable tab bar:
github - scrollable tab bar by BananaDev
It's free and provides a wide variety of customization options allowing you to fully change control.
I'm developing a iPad app which has a popover which appears to show you a list of items. I need the ability to delete one of the items, so I'm considering adding the ability to press-and-hold (a.k.a. long tap) on one of the list items which would show another popover for that item, with an action list showing a delete button.
Two questions:
In terms of iPad UX, is this a good idea? Haven't seen it anywhere, and I guess it could be a little confusing...but how else can I do this?
Is this possible, code wise? I haven't tried it, but I am still pretty new to iOS development so I could see myself fumbling round for hours before finding out there's a technical reason why it's not possible.
Thanks!
It's not a good idea, and I don't think it's possible even though it's possible.
Apple's Human Interface Guidelines clearly state that you should not do it. This is as definitive an answer as there can be regarding UX.
For inspiration on how to delete items without requiring a popover, look at how UITableView does it, for instance.
Often, you'll have an Edit button in the top toolbar inside the popover to trigger edit mode.
If you want some kind of confirmation dialog, use UIActionSheet. They look good and work well enough, especially in popovers. In your case, I think these are the way to go.
I am trying to design a feature in my application for the iPhone that simulates the Springboard feature (Main menu of the iPhone that allows you to view more apps), or the way Weather application works that allows you to flip between views.
Does anyone have any samples of this how I would go about doing this. It's seems very trivial but I am wondering if I am missing something that is already available either as an Apple example or someone who did a tutorial on this.
The image below show how the user would use it.
alt text http://www.agilitesoftware.com/SpringboardExample.png
As they slide their finger to the right (or left) the other image would begin to show up. And it would animate smoothly. The faster you swiped your finger the faster it would move to the next view.
Update: The other feature is that it should mimic the same feel when you slide your hand across the display that is snaps to the current view into place. It should not keep sliding across if there is more than 1 view to the direction you swiping your finger.
I've seen other applications use this so that is why I am asking.
This is accomplished using the UIScrollView with the pagingEnabled property set to true. Just add each of your views, adjust the contentSize, and it will automatically "page" to the width of the screen across the content.
There is a sample app (with code) with exactly this functionality on the iPhone developer site on Apple.com (I believe it's called "PageControl".) - I'd suggest checking it out.
d.
I'm writing an app that uses a similar UI. As NilObject recommended, we're using a UIScrollView with pagingEnabled=YES.
You may also be interested in this example code involving just two child views. I'm trying it out now; it's an interesting technique but I've had to write some additional special-casing code for some odd situations that resulted.
There's also another question on this site that asks about creating a grid of icons like the home screen.
I would check out Joe Hewitt's code from the Three20 project for this. It provides a nice interface and further refinement of the UIScrollView implemented as TTScrollView and TTScrollViewDelegate, TTScrollViewDataSource.