How to create a view similar to iPod player? - iphone

I'm creating an app that shows a list of items one by one on the screen. Each item will have a name and phone number, and will be displayed in a view called person view. My project is similar to the iPod music player view:
However, instead of showing the album image, I want to show my person view. Could someone explain me how to achieve the navigation when the user hits |<< or >>|? Also, how can I build a similar view? Any code snippet/blueprint would be quite helpful. Thanks!

One thing to keep in mind is that Apple's app store review guidelines contain advice that apps that reproduce iPod controls may be rejected. My guess is that this is probably meant more to discourage apps from using a control like the traditional iPod jog wheel, but it's something you may want to be careful about.

Related

adding camera as subview

I am adding camera using {[UIImagePickerController availableMediaTypesForSourceType:UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera]} as a subview to a UIView with fixed boundaries in my app.
Everything is working fine. But all the examples i see shows displaying camera as a modalcontroller as single screen. My doubt is, are there any cases that APPLE will reject if the camera is added as an subview to a view?. Should it be only shown as a full screen modal controller?
There is no rule that says you may not use camera view as a subview. It's all down to the specifics of your requirements and your app. Apple probably won't reject your app just because of such use of the camera view.
For example, Layar app is using camera view as a background for their overlays - clearly not a modal controller.
At the same time, consider the user's experience. If you are providing your user with the ability to take a picture with the camera and then use this picture in further application logic, then using it as a modal controller may be a better approach, as it provides the user with a consistent experience across multiple apps: users do get used to certain experiences and you need to have a valid reason to go against those consistent experiences.
At the same time, if you do have a valid reason why you want to have camera view as a subview (for example, display an overlay layer over it or apply a filter to the preview, or whatever else), then this is a perfectly valid reason for your UI design decision.
So, to summarize, there's no rule against it, but keep the user's experience in mind. Also remember that Apple may choose to reject your app for any reason they choose - and they don't have to explain it to you. At least, that's what you're agreeing to when you join the developer's programme.

iOS - How to show hints for gestures for iOS app?

I have seen some apps where when you launch them for the first time after downloading (e.g. Chrome app on iPhone), it shows you a list of animated gestures on the screen, kind of giving you a tour of the app.
How do I build one something like that? And how does the app know to launch only for the first time after download and not since then? For the second question, I am guessing a "shown=TRUE" value can be saved inside a PList file and checking the value each time when the app finished launching. But I am more curious about the mechanism involved in creating a guided app tour.
You can use transparent and semi-transparent images with a UIImageView, so you can make up an image with arrows and notes and put over the whole screen. You could fade it out when the user taps.
To know if it's the first time running the app, you should use NSUserDefaults instead of a plist; it's much easier, and you should be app to find a quick tutorial on that fairly easily.
Also, you could check around on this site for controls like this one. I haven't used any of them myself, so I'm not sure how much they differ from a regular UIImageView. They look nice though.

official alternative to implement Splitview as a subview for an IPad App?

I'm developing an app in IOS using Storyboard for the Ipad. I want to add UISplitViewController as a subview of my app. I want to generate this kind of output (see below image). when user click on FirstView's 'Next' button, a second view-splitview should appear.
Output:
But Apple's guidelines says that we can't push UISplitViewController as a subview of module. if we use a UISplitViewController, it has to be visible at all the times in our app.
so
when i tried to add any splitviewcontroller directly into the storyboard, it generated the error .
Split View Controllers cannot be pushed to a Navigation Controller
I dig around the net but unfortunately couldn't find any proper help.
is there any official alternative to use such a kind of facility by Apple itself?
or any link to the working code or samples to implement such a kind of functionality.
If i'm using third party solution, will my app get banned by Apple App store as they don't allow to do so?
I think this is a very basic kind of functionality which many people needs to implement in their app as a submodule. So there must be a inbuilt facility by apple. may b i don't know about it.
any help would be greatly appreciated.
This isn't an answer to your exact question, but may help in part.
I have an app that uses a UISplitViewController that is a subview of a UITabBarController.
This goes against Apple guidelines, but was desirable for my design that started originally as an iPhone app, and that I wanted to convert to a Universal app. I also wanted to maintain the UI convention of my app that the iPhone users were familiar with.
Unsurprisingly, there were problems with the notification of the orientation to the various UISplitViewControllers that weren't visible (though it would seem that Apple could support this if they chose to).
The workaround was to use the new API added in iOS 5.0,
splitViewController:shouldHideViewController:inOrientation:
...and always return NO. Not the ideal UI arrangement, but it works, and was accepted by Apple as an app update.
So, (clearly) you'll need to do this programmatically, rather than use Storyboards, but I think if you can get it working, Apple may approve. I wouldn't recommend you risk this if you can avoid it, however.

iPhone/ iPad app development TV Out

HI,
I have just submitted my first application to iTunes for approval, however, there is one thing I really want to add to it ASAP.
I would like to code into an app that it can use the TV Out functions of both the iPhone and iPad? Ideally it would work in a similar way to how keynote works i.e. you see a bit more on the iPad itself than is projected on the TV, but even just mirroring the screen would be a step in the right direction.
I have searched all over for this and all I keep getting is about downloading jailbreaks for you iPhone to mirror the screen, which doesn't really help.
Thanks in advance,
If you just want to mirror, use my TVOutManager singleton. I've put up code to do this on github: https://github.com/robterrell/TVOutManager (Hmmm... I just noticed I haven't pushed the most recent code. I'll review and push new code asap.) I wrote up some detailed info about it at http://www.touchcentric.com/blog/archives/123 if you want to know the how's and why's.
Basically, just add the files to your project, and call:
[[TVOutManager sharedInstance] startTVOut];
If you want to do more than mirroring, read the docs on UIScreen. It's fairly trivial to create a UIWindow on the external screen (steal the bits from TVOutManager if you need to) and add subviews to it. This way you could have a Keynote-like controller on the device screen, while the main display is on the external display.
http://mattgemmell.com/2010/06/01/ipad-vga-output should get you started ...
Mirroring is not possible.
But to draw on an external display, just get the UIScreen object for the external display, then set the screen property of a UIWindow to it, (making sure to set the frame correctly etc) everything in that window should be drawn on the respective display.
Relative links:
developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/UIWindow_Class/UIWindowClassReference/UIWindowClassReference.html (look at screen property)
developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/UIScreen_Class/Reference/UIScreen.html (look at +screens)
(I don't have any reputation => can't post clickable links)
I think, you can't do this. You can only stream videos from iPod app.
But, if you have jailbreak on your device, try this (link) or take a look at this great YouTube video (link) showing exactly what you need.

Playing iPhone movies through TV out

Is there any way to emulate the Videos app such that we still maintain controls on the device (iPad/iPhone), but sends the video out through the cables to the TV? I looked into screen mirroring, but it's way too slow for videos, and regardless, the UIGetScreenImage() used by screen mirroring is no longer allowed by Apple.
The Videos app seems to have exactly what I need, but I don't see anything simple to make that happen.
Update (10/15/10): So apparently movies played through UIWebView have TV-Out support, while MPMoviePlayerController movies don't.
http://rebelalfons.posterous.com/iphone-os-support-for-tv-out
However, there is a caveat: this does not work on older devices updated to the most recent iOS. That is, iPod touches, iPhone 3G & 3GS don't work, while iPhone 4 and iPads do. Hoping there's some more stuff that we can use to fill in the gaps in compability, since I know its possible. Apps like AirVideo and StreamToMe currently support this functionality.
I am not sure if there is an official way to do this. But as for your examples, AirVideo uses method Swizzling (check out: http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?MethodSwizzling) to override checks in Movie Player, and acting like Videos app
I guess some with some reverse engineering on SDK, you can find where the checks are made, and swizzle that method, with your custom one.
In 3.2 and later (postdating the site you link to), UIScreen has a class method, 'screens' that'll return an array of one object — the main screen — if no external display is available, or two screens — the main screen and the external screen — if a TV lead is connected. The task should be as simple as positioning the views you want to appear on the external screen within its frame and the controls you want on the device within the other.
Have you tried that?
Edited for one additional comment: also as of 3.2, it is explicitly permissible to create an MPMovieController and then grab the view from it to treat as a normal UIView rather than doing a full 'present'. So that's how you'd get a movie view that you can position as you wish.