I'm working with some data icons in table view. And sometimes my icons is in disabled state. I want to try create grayed versions of my icons programmatically, before I ask designer to do that for me.
Similar adjustment happens in UIButton when image auto-adjusted for highlighted state. Does anyone know how to do that image adjustment?
What about just modifying the alpha of the icons?
If you make the images partly transparent you'll get a similar effect and no extra programming is needed.
Another possibility is to add a partially transparent gray UIImageView over the button. The button will essentially be made gray-looking -- you'll need the UIImageView to have an alpha of about .2, or somewhere in that range.
Related
I'm trying to recreate this UITableView cell design.
This is as far as I have got...
I'm looking for a way of stretching the background of my UILabel dynamically. It needs to stretch at a specific point in the middle of my background.png image.
Does something like this exist? Am I going about solving this problem the right way?
I'm very new to iPhone dev so please be gentle.
Well there are many solutions, first you can set the image as a background color.
This is what you have done already by the looks of it, but you need to make the image repeatable.
Meaning it can't really have a start or an end.
Another way is to add an UIImageView behind the UILabel and set the image to a stretchable with a left and top cap.
This wil stretch the image but will leave the top/bottom and beginning/end the way they are.
You can read more about this in the Apple doc: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/UIImage_Class/Reference/Reference.html
just like the popover in the attached screenshots, the popover allow user to change themes.
I know that there are some examples around but they are all using images to achieve this, make it hard to change themes.
I believe the app in the screenshots doesn't using images to do it.
thanks for any help!
In my Win background such skins (called "Flat" in Delphi and WinForms) were made by drawing in code: select a color, draw a line, select another color, draw a rounded rectangle and so on.
Also, it is necessary to introduce a class "ColorTheme" with a set of fields for every color used. You may have several ColorTheme instances and swap them when you need to change color theme.
I've not much response so am adding some more info.
My buttons are not rectangular, nor organised in a grid so I need a way of creating what looks like a button (and shows that it has been pressed visually, as per a standard UIButton) but where the touchable area is different to the image area.
I am using a transparent PNG and that element works fine. I've added the buttons in Interface Builder and am wondering if that is the problem.
However, if I change imageEdgeInsets, it distorts the image display, which is obviously not what I want.
Bizarrely, if I increase the dimemsions of the button, it doesn't change the image, but if I decrease them it does.
I have tried different combinations of mode (scale to fill etc), but to no avail.
I am aware that there is an image and background image property, but in IB there is only one.
Essentially, I don't understand how the geometry works and the Apple documentation doesn't seem to help.
Surely, I can't be the only person to try to do this. Any help would be warmly welcomed.
Many thanks,
Chris.
Try setting the buttons setting to Aspect Fit. This will fill the button with your image so a smaller image than the button size would leave the space around the image.
Also set the button type to custom.
In the end, I stumbled across Ole Begemann's Non-rectangular buttons class. It just does what I need - to be able to create buttons where the touchable area follows the visible element of a non rectangular image.
#Helium3 - thanks - that allowed me to use a larger touch area, bit not a smaller one.
First, I'm not talking about icon libraries or mockup tools/libraries.
I'm familiar with various icon libraries that people have created, but other than the stuff from the example code like UICatalog, I'm wondering if anyone knows of anyone who has created free libraries of custom button bitmaps (stretchable button images), slider handle/track bitmaps, etc Basically bitmaps to customize the look of standard controls for those controls (like buttons and sliders) that allow you to specify such bitmaps.
I'm also interested in any photoshop tutorials/templates on/for creating stretchable custom button images, bitmaps for slider parts, etc. (Afraid I'm not a huge PS god or anything.)
Anyone know of any resources like this for fancying up the standard controls?
I've been able to find several stretchable buttons by searching through my collections of sample code for: "stretchableImageWithLeftCapWidth"
From the Apple sample code, the UICatalog, BubbleLevel, iPhoneMultichannelMixerTest, avTouch, AQOffilineRenderTest, and TouchCells sample code all contain buttons with stretchable images.
Hope this helps!
Stretchable buttons is no problem - there's nothing special you need to do in Photoshop. Just make the image of the button stretchable and set the radius to that of any rounded corners you have on the button graphic.
Slider parts - I'm pretty sure you'd have to make your own UIControl from scratch.
To make a button in Photoshop, create a new file with transparent background, select the Shape tool, rectangle near the bottom of the tools, drag out a rectangle. Size doesn't matter™. For a rounded rectangle, click and hold the same tool, choose the rounded rect shape and set a corner radies (same radius as in stretchableImage later).
Double-click the layer right of the layer name to get the layer style popup. Check Color Overlay and set the color you want. Check Inner Bevel and make its size somewhere below half the height of the rectangle - I think 90 degrees for the Global Angle works well. A lower opacity and larger size makes the bevel look less chunky.
Ctrl-click (option-click) the graphics rectangle in your layer to select the button's outline. Deselect the bottom half of it by using the marquee tool (M) at the top of the tools. Select a light gray foreground color, nearly white. Create a new layer with the square icon under the layer list (Windows->Layers if not visible). Fill the selection of the new layer with the paint bucket, and drag down opacity for the layer until the 'matte laquer' effect of it looks right.
A simple button, but that's the gist of it.
You guys helped so much with my last question, I figured I'd give you a shot at another. I have written an app with a theme that uses a dark blue glassy background and white / gray text and labels. The textfields in my app have clearcolor backgrounds and white texts and everything shows up very well. My only concern is that when you hold down a touch in a text box to get the magnification loupe, of course the white text shows up on a white background... which you can not read. Anybody got any ideas on how to implement a usable loupe here?
Unfortunately, the only "public" way I know how to change the loupe background is by setting textField.backgroundColor
I assume that since you're setting your backgrounds as clearColor, the magnifier defaults to white background, so the only way is to set your backgroundColor as something not clear.
I'm also assuming that since you did mention that you set your backgrounds a clear, that having it not be clear is not an option. So two ways I can think up in my mind about how to get around this is:
Assuming that the magnification lopue gets its background color by calling the backgroundColor implementation (and not some other obscure private API method): override the backgroundColor method and return a solid color.
Create your own loupe (probably not feasible)
I figured out a simple work around that achieved the desired effect. I also went through the full process of making my own loupe but since there is clear documentation on making your own loupe (see kiyoshi's answer), and this other method is ridiculously simple, I decided to document it here. It is basically just faking the clear background so that the white text shows up in the loupe. The background I am using for the view looks like blue smoke on a darker blue background:
alt text http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/9835/beforestatex.jpg
I took a screenshot of the simulator with the textfield visible and a black background so it would show up better:
alt text http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/9023/blackfieldx.jpg
Then I took that screenshot and made it semi transparent in photoshop, and overlayed my original background image to find exactly where the textfield appeared on the background:
alt text http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/9493/transparencyfullscreenx.jpg
Then I copied the exact pixels that would be used as the background of the textfield into a new PNG and saved that and set it as the the background image:
alt text http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/3450/textboxback.png
forwardToField.backgroundColor = [UIColor colorWithPatternImage: [UIImage imageNamed:#"textboxback.png"]];
Keep in mind that the image will be repeated as a pattern within the loupe... so if you don't want to see the edges, simply make sure your textfield is larger than the loupe height and width.
Before:
alt text http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/2672/beforex.jpg
After:
alt text http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/2182/afterxd.jpg
I hope this helps somebody out there!
Actually its pretty feasible to create your own loop. Haven't tried subitting to apple yet so don't know how they feel about it.
Basic idea is override touches, use a timer to see how long the user has been touching the screen. The loupe is just a UIView that grabs as an image the view behind it and magnifies it.
Check out this article from Craftymind here
The article has you cache the entire image behind which is definitely faster, for rendering the loupe, but if you have stuff (i.e. textFields) that are constantly changing I've been able to render the loope image real-time without too much of a performance hit.