Just a general question here, I have an iPhone app that has 3 textfields on a view. What is best practice for displaying 'form elements' and 'labels'?
Coming from a web background I have automatically used labels (above the textfields) & textfields on my UI, but should i get rid of my labels and use the placeholder property of the textfields instead?
the app target audience will be varied demographics and i envisage a lot of newbie iphone users using the app.
thanks
kb
You are correct, placeholder text is the way to go. For an example, go to the Calendar app, tap on the + button at the top-right, & select 'Title Location'. You will see something similar to what you are trying.
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Good Afternoon/Evening/Morning Folks,
I recently encountered a discussion with another developer on dismissing a UIPickerView. We work on a legacy enterprise application that had a lot of issues and was written very poorly (among other things). Since then, we revamped and fixed a lot of bugs with this program, strictly adhering to Apple's Human Interface Guidelines as much as possible while keeping to original requirements.
We seem to have a difference in opinion as Human Interface Guidelines do not really go into any detail about picker views. We implemented our new UIPickerView with a "Done," Button to confirm a selected value to be placed in a UITextField. Screen's input would be locked until they selected a value or clicked done.
Legacy application prior to our changes allowed users to utilize a done button but also by way of tapping a value selected in a picker. In addition, legacy application would also show selected UIPickerView value in UITextField prior to selection, wiping out original contents , if any was selected prior to opening a UIPickerView.
So, What is correct way to implement a UIPickerView per common practice or Strict Apple Documentation (if any exists). What is common practice?
Sorry, I cannot post any screen shots or code snippets due to business process reasons. I will do my best to explain if any questions arise.
Thanks,
We can figure this out through apps designed by Apple. Here are two examples
1. Contacts
Find a contact person in the Contacts app and set birthday. The picker shows up. While you are dragging the pickers, it does not set value to the text field. It happens only when you release the wheel. There is no Done button to hide the picker it self. To dismiss it, you can either click on the done button on navigation bar to end editing for the whole page, or click on another text field which pops a different keyboard.
2.Setting - Date&Time
Basically the same as Contacts app. Here you cannot even dismiss the picker.
I have experience in Android and currently started to learn iOS. I created a mechanism to Pick data in an Android App. When I click on Date button, a DatePicker pops up:
As you see It has Cancel and Set button.
My question is about my iphone App. I want to have the same mechanism. When I click on the button, Date picker pops up (that can have Set and cancel button like Android Date picker). How can I do that? I'm not sure that it is a good way in iPhone, Can you help me if we can design a better mechanism?
Here's a UX comparison between Android and iOS standard widgets, with links to the documentation on the relevant Apple / Android websites. It's a nice way to get started learning all the technical terms.
http://kintek.com.au/blog/portkit-ux-metaphor-equivalents-for-ios-6-and-android-4/
Hopefully that gets you started.
Apple has a sample project that demonstrates this. You'll have to adapt it slightly: instead of showing/hiding the date picker itself, you'll want to show/hide a view containing a date picker and a dismissal button.
It's called DateCell.
Basically, it treats the date picker as if it were the keyboard for a cell containing the date. You'll need to manage hiding it when the user enters a text field (and thus, needs the real keyboard) and scrolling to keep the date row in view, but all the bits you need are in this project one way or the other.
One way to do it would be add a custom buttons to the same view containing date picker and then pop it up when the users wants. Instead of using the date picker delegate use the buttons action to get the date picker value.
I would like to know how to display a pop-up with some text, in an iphone application that I am developing. The part of the app I am talking about consists of some text pulled in from a plist file, all this happens in a view controller object which also consists of a button. When the user presses the button, I would like to show a pop-up window (not a small alert like the one obtained using UIAlertView but one similar to the pop-up ads that appear when you launch certain apps on the iphone, with the background dim and a window with a close button etc etc..), ya so anyway I would like to know how to achieve this, mainly if there is any pre-defined class that can make this happen. Any help would be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
You could use MBProgressHUD for this. You can add custom views in it and it also has the dimBackground property to dim the containing view and many other useful things.
I have a custom built sign up component that I would like to enhance. I would like to show error messages before sending the data to the server (like "invalid email") using a built in alert system (other than modal) if possible. Is there any on iOS? Do I have to build one myself? I saw that some apps show a grey rectangle near the bottom of the screen, is that custom built?
Thanks!
Check out this code sample if you want to use Tweetbot style notifications in your application, these are non modal
http://blog.mugunthkumar.com/coding/ios-code-tweetbot-like-alertpanels/
All iOS alerts are modal (for now). You will have to build your own if you want different functionality, but it isn't too difficult. You can put together a little UIView with a label that is normally hidden. Then just set the text and show it when you need to.
In my app I want to provide option in dropdown box, I know there is no such thing in iPhone can I create dropdown box using available controllers? Please can anyone suggest me how I can achieve this?
Deepak, You can create a Drop down like control with a help of a UIButton and a UITableView indicating the drop down list. But for sure your application would be rejected by Apple.
Most of the iPhone users would be comfortable using a drop down box in an iPhone app, because people got used to Pickers .
So better go for using UIPicker, which is meant for what you are asking.