i often do not split view and controller related things correctly.
should i always subclass a uiview if i want custom uibuttons and backgrounds in my app and add style related stuff in my view or should i handle this in my controller? or probably subclass a uibutton?
what about alignings? when should i subclass a uiview, add buttons to it and align then or handle this in my controller?
thanks for your hints!
please leave some comments if something is unclear.
Should i always subclass a uiview if I want custom uibuttons and
backgrounds in my app and add style related stuff in my view
If your need are basic, you coan just insert wanted elements as subviews of your view without having to subclass anything. Buttons and views have enough properties to handle those simple needs. But everything depends on what are those needs.
Should i handle this in my controller? or probably subclass a
uibutton?
Subclassing UIButton for UIButton behaviour is not a bad idea :-) But as said before, what do you need as special behaviour ? A special image : there is a property for that. A special reaction on events, manage it into the controller on IBActions. A UIButton with UFO behaviours, ok, let's subclass it.
What about alignings? when should i subclass a uiview, add buttons to
it and align then or handle this in my controller?
Hmmm... I guess never. This can (should) be done in the controller. The controller controls the whole UIItems. So if you want to align one item regarding another, do it into the controller. If you want to align special graphics or text that is displayed into the button, sublass it and manage that in the drawRect method.
Related
I was googling for a while and I found similar problems but when the custom View is inside a ScrollView, but that is not my case.
I have a custom view that consists of a UILabel behind a UITextField, so I can animate that label later.
The problem is that when I add a View in my ViewController and in the Identity Inspector I set the Class as my custom class, when I use the application the UITextField within my custom view does not receive the touches well and it takes time to gain focus and therefore to open the keyboard. The strange thing is that if I move that same arrangement of views to my main ViewController in Storyboard everything works fine. Why doesn't it do it when I place it using the described method?
I plans to reuse this custom view a lot, so putting logic and views in each ViewController is not an option.
Thanks in advance
Well, the problem was in the constraints of the container UIView. That means, the UIView in my main ViewController. The Height of the UIView was a little bit smaller than the space required for my custom view, so although my custom view seemed to draw correctly, it was not receiving the gestures correctly. The solution was simply increase the height to the correct value occupied by my custom View. Thanks a lot!
I do understand how to go about making the UIKeyboard push up the UIView if the active UITextView is blocked by the UIKeyboard as per this question: How to make a UITextField move up when keyboard is present?.
What I'm wondering is, from a design perspective, how do you go about implementing the keyboardDidShow and keyboardDidHide methods so that all of the views in your app, whether they be a UIView, UITableView, or UIScrollView all have this functionality and so you need to implement these methods only once?
The only way I could think of would be to have the view property of the UIViewController always set to a UIView, and if you have a UIViewController that needs a UIScrollView or UITableView, just attach it as a subview to this. Then if the UITextView is being blocked, just move the parent UIView up so it will move all of the views that are attached to it.
Does this sound like a good plan, or is it even worth it? Anyone else have any other ideas?
This is a little old, but it's a great article about using firstResponder methods to tell views to slide up. I, personally, like to put my UITextField in a parent container and move it all up. However, I do NOT suggest putting everything in there and moving it all up, because the UITextField "feels" better just above the keyboard. But I do like the background or certain items to move up with the UITextField.
See below: http://cocoawithlove.com/2008/10/sliding-uitextfields-around-to-avoid.html
This is a nice implementation that moves the field up based on the section of the screen it's in (upper, middle, lower). Works very well. May need to be updated for newest SDK, but should be pretty easy.
In experimenting with this, I noticed that if you want to make a BaseViewController that implements this functionality to work for everything that inherits from it, you have to attach another view on top of the UIViewController's view property in order to get it to work. Reason is, if you push the UIViewController's view property up when the keyboard appears, then it resets itself if the app comes back from being active and it's messy.
The problem with this however, is now in all of your child classes you have to attach your subviews to this new view property instead of the regular view property. Also, you probably have to make a custom UITableViewController which will inherit from your BaseViewController class so it can inherit the keyboard notification methods.
Ultimately, I've found it's not the worst idea to have another view on top of the UIViewController's property for a bunch of different scenarios. Making a custom UITableViewController isn't that big of a deal either. So if you have a lot of text fields in your app, this might not be the worst way to go.
What should be the best way to create a effect like this and the handling of navigation controllers and view controllers ... what to do if I don't want to re-size each subsequent view in viewcontorller and things appear as if it is a tabBar
I would recommend using an UIImageView for the blue background, then 5 UIButtons of custom type with PNG images for the actual buttons.
Subclass UIView and put all the code to set up the background and buttons in the init function. That way you can easily place your custom TabBar wherever you like.
The individual buttons also allow you to easily animate them for transitions if you want.
Update to reflect updated question:
If you want the actual UITabBar functionality, things become much more complex.
You have three basic options:
a) Implement the functionality you need from scratch in your new class
b) Subclass UITabBar and try to override the drawing code with the code above
c) Take a look at already existing alternative implementations of UITabBar and base your new class on one of them. This will probably be the easiest solution.
I want to make a small area to present some information in the middle of a UIToolbar and was wondering what the best way to do this is.
I need to show some text and a graphic, both of which need to be updated (around every 3 seconds) as new information arrives. The graphic is similar to the iPhone signal strength indicator, so it can be either custom drawn or selected from one of 3 graphics (low, medium, high strength).
I'll probably use initWithCustomView: to create a UIBarButtonItem, although I would like the view to be clickable (to allow the user to change the information shown).
What's the best way to make that view? Can I use a NIB, or do I need to do custom drawing in the view? What's the best way to update the buttons? I'm assuming that I'll have to remake the toolbarItems array each time and set it when the information changes. Is there a cleaner way to do this? Thanks.
Using initWithCustomView: sounds like a good way to go. You can create your custom view any way you want: with a NIB, by drawing it, even using images. It can also have its own subviews. It can be any object that inherits from UIView. (So, if you wanted, you could even make it actionable by using a UIButton, a custom UIControl, or a custom UIView with a gesture recognizer attached.)
You shouldn't have to remake toolbarItems (or, for that matter, do anything with it after you've added all your button items) if you just keep a pointer to your custom view UIBarButtonItem. It could be an instance variable. Then, to update the custom view, you could access it as you would any other view. I've never actually tried this, but I can't see any problem with doing it.
You sound like you had it mostly figured out. Hope this is helpful.
I needed the same solution and was hoping for some code examples from you. So I ended up doing it all in IB and the steps are here as follows:
Create UItoolbar in IB with no Items. (A Bar Button Item will be added again once you add the UIView)
Add UIView as subview of UIToolbar
Add UILabels to subview of UIView that is already a subview of the UIToolbar.
Create IBOutlets from UIToolbar, UIView and each UILabel and then you can reference the labels in your app.
I did set the backgrounds to clearColor so the text appears on top of UIToolbar without any box or borders.
And the text updates dynamically which was the desired outcome.
Hope this helps someone as this has been eluding me for a while.
I want to apply a custom alpha value to the title of the UINavigationBar. The UINavigationBar is part of the UINavigationController and the UINavigationController is part of a UITabBarController.
Edit: Here is a picture of what I created using a UIToolbar and a UILabel. I want to do the same using the title in the UINavigationController: http://i.stack.imgur.com/B8YX0.png
I think the only way to accomplish this would be to subclass the UINavigationBar and override a method that allows me to set the Alpha when it's drawn.
Here are my questions:
Is this the correct way to do this?
What are the HIG ramifications of this?
I am new to subclassing in Objective-C, can you provide a guide or
tutorial that will help me grasp the steps required in subclassing a
UI Element and implementing a change?
When I get the subclass configured, I can view it in IB by changing
the class of the UINavigationBar to my custom class, correct?
Are there any "gotchas" that can come up with sublassing that an
expert like yourself can give me a head's up on?
This is something you shouldn't do. Why would you want to change that color but not the overall opacity of the bar? it decreases readability. There are multiple problems:
there is no public API, so it's not trivial
tampering with the subviews is fragile, may break and may have side-effects
it's not foreseen to be done -- the alpha value of the view is used and animated when pushing/popping a controller
If you really want to do it, there's only one clean, public way: Give each navigation item to be pushed a custom title view. You can tamper with that one as much as you want. So it's possible to set a view with a UILabel as subview and having it's alpha set to 0.5.
When a navigation bar is being managed by a navigation controller, there are only a few properties you're allowed to change (see docs). One of them is translucent which adjusts the alpha, but only to an Apple-determined value.