presentModalViewController translucent with previous view in the background - objective-c

Question

Im trying to present a view translucently and that the previous view sticks around and be that its visible in the background.
I've got
[self presentModalViewController:modalView animation:YES];
and I have the transparency set in the modalView's viewDidLoad, but after modalView gets brought up the previous view disappears. What can I do to keep the other view to stay around in the background?
I have also tried adding it with
[self.view addSubview:modalView.view];
It doesn't cover the whole screen, I would like to be able to solve this problem using presentModalViewController method.

Answer 1

It sounds like you just want a view to be displayed on top of your main view. Modal views are a finicky way of presenting subviews, instead you should look at creating a simple view class to add to your view controller. You can then use [UIView animate...]; method to animate it in and out of view.
To get you started:
- (void)displayViewButtonPressed(id)sender
{
if (!self.topView)
{
UIView *overlayView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(44.0f, 22.0f, 40.0f, 44.0f];
[overlayView setAlpha:0.0f];
[overlayView setBackgroundColor:[UIColor redColor]];
[self setTopView:overlayView];
[overlayView release];
}
[self.view addSubView:self.topView];
[UIView animateWithDuration:0.5
animations:^{
[self.topView setAlpha:1.0f];
}];
}
In the above method we create a custom UIView and animate it into position. We maintain a pointer to it so we can remove it later (like so:)
- (void)dismissViewButtonTapped:(id)sender
{
[UIView animateWithDuration:0.5
animations:^{
[self.topview setAlpha:0.0f];
}
completion:^(BOOL finished) {
[self.topView removeFromSuperView];
}
}
Its a little more work that using modal views, but it gives you much more flexibility in regards to what you use and how you display it.
Hope this helps:)