What options do I have when creating menu with options (contextual menus). What is allowed and what does Apple provide?
I have a toolbar with buttons and a click of a button opens a menu with options:
Examples:
UIPopoverControllers are only available on iPads, but it's ok to create similar looking things for iPhone
What you see in the picture, is entirely custom. a UIView subclass likely. There are pretty much no limits to what you do with your UI, within reason, so no ugly highly contrasting primary/secondary colours, and it's best to keep it at least similar to the native UI. If you say use a windows 7 phone ui style in an iPhone app it's more likely to get rejected by Apple, than keeping to the style of iOS.
So make it look as "professional" as possible, using gradients and shadows, edge arrows, like in the above picture.
Apple provides pretty much nothing that your looking for,
Similar built-in widgets would be UIPopoverController (iPad-only) or UIActionSheet. I like your menu better though.
I would also recommend looking at the guidelines for such custom UI elements. I can not say what is 'allowed', but Apple is not shy about how your app should look/feel/function.
Towards the top of this link talks about toolbars, status bars, etc.
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/UIElementGuidelines/UIElementGuidelines.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40006556-CH13-SW1
Related
Does anybody know how it has been realized? I have found many topics about popups for iPhone (alert style, etc.), but this case is more complicated for my opinion. In iBooks we see shadows, arrow and borders. This window closes after tapping outside borders.
PS Can't post image here, but I have found an example:
http://chamberfour.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ibooks.jpg
Well, back some time ago I had to face a similar problem. Strictly speaking, what we see there is a popover, but the documentation explicitly states that UIPopoverController may only be used in an iPad application so you will probably have to do what I did: implement your own or, perhaps better, find an open source implementation (there should be plenty of them out there).
I've already implemented a sidebar like that in Facebook/Path apps with ECSlidingViewController but I've noticed that Spotify app it's a bit different and has a very slick effect. The sidebar is not already full visible but it slides and show the icons as more as you swipe with your finger. How to animate the sidebar in this way?
Here an image for a better explanation.
Take a look at MMDrawerController https://github.com/mutualmobile/MMDrawerController
It has nice sample app and allows custom sliding effects, including the one you are looking for
There are many such libraries available to implement the behaviour you have asked for. I would recommend ECSlidingViewController since its easy to use plus it supports StoryBoards:
ECSlidingViewController
As i said there are a lot of different libraries to implement the same thing. You can also check the link HERE that contains a whole list of similar libraries.
I have read a few posts about people putting in either their own icons or Apple's icons into a toolbar, or as a customview into the rightBarButtonItem. I was wondering if that's considered bad practice, ok practice, good practice, etc. I was looking around, and I saw this: http://www.techtree.com/India/Features/Top_5_Productivity_Apps_for_iPad/551-115236-899-2.html. In the Numbers app or Keynote App, it looks like they use a UINavigationController or some way to navigation + custom icons on the RHS. I'd like to do the same, but I didn't know if this was considered bad practice, or something to be avoided in case Apple changes things down the line. I basically want a couple bar button items and a UISearchBar. Having a search bar at the bottom looks funny to me. I noticed the Facebook app on the iPhone has a neat viewcontroller where you click the top left icon and it opens a way to navigate through their app. I don't know if anyone has a tutorial of what's going on there.
There are plenty of apps that do what your talking about, so Apple shouldn't give you any problems.
" in case Apple changes things down the line."
On the other hand, they can be finicky about any kind of app, so there are no guarantees. They may require all iPhone apps support landscape mode in the future. You never know.
Look over the Apple User Interface Guidelines if you want to know more about their "recommended" control use.
I was asked by a client to make a "skinnable" app and I don't really know what that means.
I googled like crazy and I didn't found a clear answer or an example.
If anyone has a clue about this, any tip would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Generally this means the app will allow the user to choose different looks for the UI, each of which will have a different color scheme, feel, etc.
What I actually did with my project. I decided to use multiple storyboards to give me greater control over the entire UI and UX of each theme. I programmatically link them all together via a master storyboard that links them all together. That's what I did, and it works very very well. Performance is great, while still maintaining high level of fine grain control over each theme. You can even keep your Header and Implementation files the same for individual view controllers, just so as you keep the names the same on the storyboard.
So for instance, one of my apps that I'm working on called Jam-mout (A music player) has multiple high quality themes. (Image attached). Each theme has it's own storyboard.
For iPhone apps, where the majority of the GUI design is provided by the operating system, you could do it by setting custom Navigation bar background images, custom button graphics, and different fonts/sizes/weights and whitespace. Make sure you're working with a designer who's familiar with the iPhone GUI (if you're not working closely with a designer this is going to be a nightmare).
I recently put together an app for a client who wanted a heavily customised GUI: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gogoparis/id428497937?mt=8. A 'skinnable' app would have several sets like this, so the user could choose between several different overall styles. (I hope your client has an enormous design budget!)
my post here should help you get started:
What is the recommended method of styling an iOS app?
if you need live theme changes, each theme in this example could post notifications when the user selects another theme (or skin) - then you can update either the theme instance itself.
alternatively, you can create identifiers for themes which are mapped (NSCFDictionary) to a central theme factory. an example identifier for a specific view for use with the theme factory could be a string MONImageSelectorTableCellThemeIdentifier.
an example manager/factory which handles all theme loading and vends references to themes:
#interface MONThemeManager : NSObject
//...
- (MONTheme *)themeForCurrentlySelectedSkinForViewWithIdentifier:(NSString *)identifier;
//...
#end
beyond that, it's hard to answer your question in more detail without knowing your requirements. the implementation of skinning an app can range from very simple to very very complex. good luck.
Already some good answer here, but I'd add that if you use a ui toolkit such as Three20
you can skin everything using CSS as you might for web pages.
I do realise this is an old post, but I thought I'd share my penny on the matter:)
To make any Cocoa app skinnable you need you think of 3 aspects of the app:
1) Uniformity: By this I mean that on all windows, views (including buttons, text inputs etc...) you want to have a 'standard' that will apply throughout the app. This is the first thing you need to look at. Although iOS and OS X alike already have 'themes' as to put it i.e. Apples default way of shading and laying things out, you can override these (refer to the individual view / window etc... documentation.
2) Performance: With skinning etc... performance is always an issue when it comes to writing your own drawRect etc... methods. The code apple have in place for the 'default' is already optimised, so you need to keep a close eye on the performance of the app whilst you are doing this. Good examples are: Do I use an image with a gradient, or do I use NSGradient? Both of which have performance issues when it comes to rendering them, but it's a question of which is the better of the two
3) userDefaults: This is generally the area where you'd be getting your 'skin settings' pulled from. userDefaults is basically where you store all of the information which you generally set in a preference pane.
If I were you I'd look into the class reference of it:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/Classes/NSUserDefaults_Class/
Furthermore, here's a nifty example of using userDefaults:
http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/iphone/nsuserdefaults_iphone-sdk/
Hope this helps!
Xcode4 introduced the gray-rounded-square style non-modal alerts that momentarily appear as required. For an example, see 'Build Succeeded'. iirc, this style of non-modal alert is also used elsewhere in Lion.
Now, also iirc, I believe I saw some official iPhone sample code showing how they recommend this effect is achieved in iPhone Apps, but I can't find it again. I'd like to use in my App this to achieve a consistent style.
If someone recalls what I'm talking about, I'd appreciate a link. Thanks.
I think you're talking about the bezel notification style? On iOS, I know SSToolkit has support for such a display (under HUD View).
Another way: This uses MBProgressHUD and provides sample code.
I think you can do it using a momentary UIActivityIndicator. Something like this
EDIT: or this
EDIT: The idea is the same, a custom activity indicator. The above answer gives you some more specific links to your problem. But well it is an activity indicator you're looking for.