How to make the MapView a button (iPhone/iPad)? - iphone

I currently have a map view in my app that is locked so that the user can't interact with it (i.e. scroll, zoom etc.), however I want to make it into a UIButton. The idea being the the can press the map view and it will call a function, the same way pressing a UIButton does.
I've had a look around online for ideas on how to achieve this but I haven't found anything yet. I tried making a UIButton over the top of the map view but I can't seem to make it invisible. I also tried linking an IBAction to the map view, however the option to link it doesn't appear in the connections inspector (as I expected to be honest - shot in the dark!).
Is there any way to achieve this effect?

You can place a UIButton over the map, just like you tried before. But to make it invisible, change the button type from Round Rect to Custom. This will make the button invisible unless you explicitly add an image to the button.
-Cheers

Related

How can I highlight the BarButton in navigation bar without tapping it?

Typically, the UIBarButtonItem will be highlighted when we tap it.
However, I intend to show the users that the action is automatically done for them when the view is loaded after 4 sec.
So I want to highlight the Button without tapping it.
How can I achieve that?
For a UIVIew object such as a UIButton, you can either use the following code Glow category on UIView that adds support for making views glow or use this example.
If you are using the first one, you can just call startGlowing and stopGlowing. When you call startGlowing, the view will start to pulse with a soft light, this effect is removed when stopGlowing is called. Check this.
For UIBarButtonItem, you might have to use the solution provided here.

How to change UIActionSheet view?

As I observed that UIActionSheet is always appearing from down side in iPhone,
but in some app, as I saw in AlarmClock, then two button became visible, one from upside and second from downside of iPhone,
What is that exactly, I can't understand, as far as I feel, it looks UIActionSheet,
I want such appearance for one of my app....
Help!
Yes just like Ole said, you can't customize UIActionSheet . But since it is just a simple subview you can create your personal "action sheet" by subviewing and animating. So if you want a button to appear on the top and one on the button, then create two UIViews resize them to the right size for your button, add your action sheet style background or any other background, add your button, connect your IBActions to the buttons and your IBOutlets to the views. Then when you want the buttons to appear animate them onto the screen (using sone CGRect, animation time and finally [UIView commitAnimations])
Probably just one or two custom views with a custom animation. UIActionSheet is not customizable so if you want something else than the default behavior you have to write it yourself. It's not that difficult.

How to have a bordered UIBarButton Item with both Image and Text - Like in Mail

In the Mail app on iPhone, when the user taps Edit, the toolbar shows two buttons, Delete and Move. These buttons have both image and text while appearing as bordered.
I tried to recreate this effect, but I have not really succeeded. Here's what I've tried:
The obvious way of setting the image and text properties. This results in some weird button with the image on top and the text below it.
Initialize the UIBarButtonButton with a custom view set to an instance of UIButton (described here). This button can then not be set to be bordered, instead it appears as a flat view (without shadows either).
I could obviously create a button and then add an UIImageView as a subview to the toolbar, but then I have to care about device rotation and some other stuff I would like to avoid. Also, I think Apple doesn't do it this way; when you select an email in Mail while in editing mode, the button label is updated with (-number-), which moves the image slightly to the left. It looks like the text and the image belong together.
So I wonder whether anybody did something like this?
Most likely these are UIButtons with stretchable image backgrounds. That's how I would do it.

Show a UINavigationBar back button without pushing a view controller

In the iPad's Photos app, when you tap an album the stack of pictures expands to fill the screen - you're in the same view, it's just rearranged the grid a little. But at the top, a left-arrow-style Back button appears, as if pushViewController had been used - except it fades in neatly, rather than sliding in. When you tap that, it fades out again, rather than sliding out.
Is there a way to replicate this behaviour? I've tried a few options so far, and might just be missing something. What I've tried:
Setting self.navigationItem's leftBarButtonItem works, but gives me a square button rather than an angled Back-style one - there are a few hacks online to make this work, such as using pictures for the button, but I'd rather only use them if there's definitely no "official" way to do this.
Setting self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem - this is generally used to customise the back button when a view controller is pushed, so it has no effect.
[self.navigationController.navigationBar setItems::] - this works, although it gives me the sliding animation rather than fading. As a result, I use animated:NO to make it just appear. Downside: when tapping Back, you do get the sliding out animation, which looks weird because the rest of the UI stays still.
Has anyone managed to replicate this effect?
Thanks in advance!
Your first approach is probably the best.
It doesn't have to be super-hacky, you can use a normal UIButton and customize it to look like a back-button using backgroundImageForState: and titleForState: (etc.), then set the UIButton object as the customView of your UIBarButtonItem.
Many apps these days customize the look & feel of the buttons anyway, so using a custom background image is quite normal. If you use resizableImageWithCapInsets: (or stretchableImageWithLeftCapWidth:topCapHeight: if you need to support iOS earlier than 5.0) then the button can still stretch to fit whatever text goes inside, and as it's a normal UIButton the text is localizable, etc. I don't consider this approach to be hacky, it is a perfectly sensible way to get around the limited functionality of UIBarButtonItem objects.
Better late than never.
To show a back button without pushing a view controller, use pushNavigationItem:animated: and popNavigationItemAnimated: on UINavigationBar. These result in the standard slide animation and creation of a back button. However, there is no way to ensure your content animation runs for the same time as the bar animation other than making an educated guess at the duration.
Since iOSĀ 7 there is a better API for achieving this effect, where you still push and pop view controllers but you provide a custom transition animation through navigationController:animationControllerForOperation:fromViewController:toViewController: from UINavigationControllerDelegate. This allows the animations between the bar and content to be perfectly coordinated.
Finally, if your content before and after is managed by UICollectionViewController, you can use useLayoutToLayoutNavigationTransitions, which is designed for use-cases like Photos.

Custom UIToolBar from Images

I need to create a UIToolbar object that uses an image for the background. Most of the buttons are images as well, and rectangular. One button, however, is round and overlaps the toolbar like the Start button on the Windows task bar. See below.
I know that I will need to subclass the UIToolbar to paint the image for the toolbar -- I think. If so, does anyone have example code showing how to do this?
Furthermore, does anyone have any ideas on how to implement the larger round button? I'm thinking of another custom subclass for this, but not sure if there might be an easier way.
I can have the art guys chop the image anyway needed, which I'm sure the round button will need to be chopped some how.
Any ideas or sample code?
alt text http://iphone.sophtware.com/toolbar.png
Maybe you'll find some inspiration at this tutorial : Recreating The Raised Center Tab Bar Button of Instagram, DailyBooth & Path
For the color, you can experiment with the tintColor property.
As for the rest, UIToolbar is not designed for this. You will need a custom component (probably based on UIView).
I think it is possible but hard.
Override the drawRect method of the toolbar to draw the whole image. Then add left and right buttons.
For the round button you can add one invisible button on the bottom middle of the View and another invisible button in the middle of toolbar. Of course, you can try to use the views instead of the buttons and track the user interaction manually.