I'm making a Schedule App for Cocoa Touch and I need to be able to select a time interval just by touching the screen. I mean, the user must be able to select with its fingers a time interval within the "ScheduleView" and then Add an event.
I was thinking of making some kind of rectangular selection, similar to the one that everyone can do in Windows Desktop, but i don't know how to detect multiple touches, neither how to draw the selection rectangle. Can anyone help me?
P.S: The "ScheduleView" it's a UIView, not a UITableView
You'll need to add a UIGestureRecognizer to your view. You can detect touches as a delegate, and this case will probably do best with a UIPanGestureRecognizer. You'll set the delegate to be yourself and draw the box within -(void)panGestureMoveAround:(UIPanGestureRecognizer *)gesture Here is a tutorial.
To draw the box, you could manually draw into the view but it may be easier to reshape a UIView on top and manipulate its border width and color like this SO question.
Related
I'm looking for a way to slide a partially concealed tool panel from off screen like the JetBlue iPhone app does. I know how to do this with regular swipe gesture recognizers, but that app has a certain threshold, after which the panel "snaps" to the on-screen position, otherwise it hides back offscreen.
How can I implement this kind of swipe-to show, but with a threshold kind of gesture recognizer? Are there any open source projects that do this kind of UI manipulation?
I have a similar interface element in an app I've written. My interface element is a UIViewController for the entire tool panel. I put a UIButton over the gripper illustration, change the button's type to custom so it visually disappears. I connect Touch Drag Inside and Touch Drag Outside to an IBAction that adjusts the position of the panel according to where the drag moves. I connect Touch Up Inside and Touch Up Outside to an IBAction that finalizes the positioning of the view. If the touch up event happens too close to the bottom, I just close the panel. If it happens anywhere higher than that threshold I open the panel. I use UIView's animation methods to smooth out these transitions. The over extension element seen in the JetBlue app can be accomplished in the drag event handler. As the panel gets closer and closer to the limit, open the view a smaller and smaller amount with each move of the touch higher. Then in the finalization, just animate the panel back down into it's preferred ending position.
The JetBlue app differs from my app in that I have a small gripper area, but JetBlue's app allows you to swipe the whole panel to adjust position. To match that functionality, I would adjust my implementation to totally cover the panel with buttons. Each would respond to my drag events with the addition that dragging would set a flag. Then my touch up event handler would check if the flag was set. If so, finalize the dragging of the panel. Otherwise, perform the appropriate action associated with each button.
If you can already implement the basics with gestures, then you're almost there!
To be honest, while I've done exactly this in my application, I use the old fashioned touchesBegan, touchesMoved, etc.
In terms of gestures, you'll have to use UIPanGestureRecognizer so you can have full control of the drag. UISwipeGestureRecognizer only recognizes swipes.
Anyway, after a certain point, you simply translate the panel only a fraction of the distance the person dragged.
CGRect newPanelFrame = panel.frame;
if (newPanelFrame.origin.y + dragOffset > 275) {
newPanelFrame.origin.y += dragOffset / 2.0;
}
panel.frame = newPanelFrame;
In touchesEnded:withEvent: or if (gestureRecognizer.state == UIGestureRecognizerStateEnded)
CGRect newPanelFrame = panel.frame;
if (newPanelFrame.origin.y > 275) {
newPanelFrame.origin.y = 275;
}
panel.frame = newPanelFrame;
The reason why I've never bothered with the UIPanGestureRecognizer is because I could never figure out how to get the non-cumulative translation (translationForView: is cumulative), which is necessary if you want to essentially slow down the drag after the threshold.
I was just doing some research into achieving a similar effect, stumbled across this post, and as a result decided to give JetBlue a try.
After playing with the sliding panel for a bit, I'm actually thinking the JetBlue guys actually went about this in a slightly more different manner.
The motions of the slider in the JetBlue app seem to handle much nicer than what you could do with a collection of UIGestureRecognizers; it's capable of animating at different velocities depending how quickly the user swipes it, and the rubber-banding compensates for this properly too.
So on that note, I actually think that they're not using UIGestureRecognizers, but that panel is actually just a standard UIScrollView aligned to the bottom of the app window, and with a bit of extra logic (probably applied via the delegate) that just makes sure it isn't possible for the scroll view to stop animating between the 'open' and 'shut' state.
Hi all:
I want to write a gesture recognizer on the iphone, that I cold use two finger to drag the view. Just like we use two finger on the MacBook Pro's touch pad.
If the view's size is larger than the window's size of the device, I could use two finger to drag the view. is there any good way to solve it ?
(Thanks enamrik and Naveen Thunga. I achieved my goal just now, but there is a new question that how could I know the UILongPressGestureRecognizer is over. I want call a method and set some value when my finger leaves the screen of my iphone.)
The UILongPressGestureRecognizer class has a numberOfTouchesRequired property you might find useful
Use uigesturerecognizer's properties and enable View's multitouch property. See some sample on UIGestureRecognizer that may help you.
I'm trying to have a sort of gesture that will seamlessly switch between a group of images this part I have sorted. The part that is catching me up is the gesture to do so and how I might introduce acceleration.
Basically the user would swipe as normal and after the swipe is registered it would change the image displayed and the faster once swiped the faster the image would change ideally it would then keep that speed until the users finger was lifted leaving the possibility to just scroll repeatedly through the images.
Any direction someone could give me would be great.
Thanks.
Assuming you would be using a UIScrollView for this, setting the scrollView.decelerationRate property would allow you to manipulate the deceleration rate/scroll speed. To calculate the "swipe speed", take a look here: Detecting Special touch on the iphone for some pointers.
There are a series UIViews arranged very close.
alt text http://www.mobilepanda.com/questiontouch.png
I hope when my finger touches some of them, my app can detect which UIView touched.
Maybe one or two or three.(because the displayed parts of each UIView are too thin).
I hope to get the middle x value of the touch, then spread the UIView where the middle x value locates and the UIViews near it.
alt text http://www.mobilepanda.com/questiontouch1.png
My way is put a transparent UIView over all these UIView to detect the touch event.
I am not sure if this is ok? or there is any better solution.(for example, make each UIView has the capability to detect the touch, mix and decide which UIView is touched.
Welcome any comment
Thanks
interdev
You don't need to do all that. The OS will decide what the center point of the finger touch is and send an event with the touch x,y coordinates to the correct view. If you make them UIButton's (a subclass of UIView) instead of UIView's the OS will do all the work for you. All you have to do is attach callbacks to each button to the functions you want called for various events (like touchUpInside, touchDownInside, etc).
How can I get a non-rectangular shaped button?
For example I do have a PNG image with alpha transparency.
How can I set the shape of a button to this image without the transparent color.
Like the others say you should have a reasonable surface for registering touch events, but I'm sure you know that and have your reasons so I'll just tell you how I did it:
I needed to do this not so long ago and what I did is what Sixten Otto just suggested. There are some hints in my original question ("UPDATE" section) for getting the alpha value for your image at a certain point:
How to create a transparent window with non-rectangular buttons?
Edit: I suggest subclassing UIControl in the example below but if you don't need any special behavior on your button apart from the "non-rectangleness" of it then just subclassing a borderless UIButton set up with your PNG will do the job and require less work. You have more control on the control's behavior by subclassing UIControl and doing it the "hard way" though.
I would suggest that you subclass UIControl and override the touch event methods, then check for alpha under the tapped point and not handle the event if alpha == 0. For drawing you override drawRect: and use the NSImage's drawInRect:fromRec:operation:fraction: method in there to draw your image in the control's frame.
First you need to load the image and get a bitmap representation of it:
buttonImage = [NSImage imageNamed:#"myButtonImage"];
buttonImageRep = [[buttonImage representations] objectAtIndex:0];
Then you can draw it to the control's view: (where stateImage is a pointer to the image that must be drawn depending on if the button is pressed or not)
- (void)drawRect:(NSRect)aRect {
[stateImage drawInRect:[self bounds] fromRect:NSMakeRect(0.0,0.0,[buttonImage size].width,[buttonImage size].height)
operation:NSCompositeSourceOver fraction:1.0];
}
At this point you have drawn your button with your png image. You can override the touch event methods and handle the event if the alpha is not 0:
NSColor *colorUnderMouse = [buttonImageRep colorAtX:mouse.x y:mouse.y];
float alpha = [colorUnderMouse alphaComponent];
That's what I did and it works wonderfully. Hope this helps!
N.B: My example is for the Mac but it should also work on the iPhone, maybe with some slight modifications.
It sounds like you are looking to have the clickable area of the button exactly match the PNG you are using.
If that is what you are looking for, I would firstly say to not do that. The iPhone is pressed using a finger, which generally doesn't have the accuracy to distinguish such a small region.
However if you are stuck on the idea, then the solution is to not use buttons at all, instead handle the click in a parent frame and manually interpret the X/Y value of the click to determine if it is in some bounding region (In the case of a rounded edge button, would likely consist of oring the result of checking 4 circles and 2 rectangles)
Edit:
Realizing part of your original question, I noticed you mentioned you wanted to handle the function automatically based on the Alpha channel. While I would recommend my method of bounding regions, you could in theory accomplish this by sampling the PNG to test the Alpha channel at a value offset by the origin of the button. Potentially even doing this in a normal button's click event.
Rectangular buttons are a button type, you can use the custom button type and assign an image to get rid of the rectangular edges of the button...heres a reference to button types http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIButton_Class/UIButton/UIButton.html#//apple_ref/doc/c_ref/UIButtonType and to UIButton http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIButton_Class/UIButton/UIButton.html
As Guvante says, it's really not a good idea to rely on precision touches. Apple, for instance, recommends that controls be at least 44px across.
I'd recommend using a UIButton of type UIButtonTypeCustom, set the button's image to your PNG, and register for touch events (see here for more on event handling). Then, in your action method, you can get the coordinates of the touch out of the event, and test those coordinates against the alpha of your image to see whether you should treat it as a "real" touch or not.
Another option could be to split your button up into multiple, rectangular parts.
#Form right about using 'drawRect' to implement custom shape for button.
But better method to exam touch inside or not inside button is using of
- (BOOL)pointInside:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event;
You can create your button transparent for touches in some parts.
If you can't use custom image for button (for example if you draw text on the button) you can use new method to draw subviews hierarchy into a image:
- (BOOL)drawViewHierarchyInRect:(CGRect)rect afterScreenUpdates:(BOOL)afterUpdates;