I am working on a project when client wants UITabBar lookalike toolbar (icons and titles) at the bottom of some views.
The tab bar needs to have 1 item at the left, empty space, and then 2 items at the right.
Do I have to use 2 extra UITabBarItems (and put them at second and third position) and hide and disable them to accomplish this, or is there a more straightforward solution?
I would like to not to use UIToolBar for this as customizing its height is a pain and causes unexpected behavior in some cases (especially when one uses modal view controllers).
I think you have the right idea. Customizing UITabBar to do stuff out of the ordinary is often quite hard and it is better to just write your own. But in your case you should be able to just as you proposed. One way would be to add the view controllers directly in IB and then set title to an empty string and untick enabled for the second and third view controller.
Related
I'm new to iOS development and am trying to build something like the screen below:
If I was doing it in Android, I can easily build the above UI in a few minutes. However, I don't know how to go about it with iOS.
I understand that the whole ViewController can be embedded in a navigation controller, which produces the title bar above. What about the bottom part though? I'm thinking of using something like a grouped UITableView but I'm not sure, since every cell will have very different contents:
A search bar, perhaps a subclassed UISearchBar, which I also don't know how to customize--the Search button at the right is required but isn't in the default UISearchBar. When the user taps on it, the UISearchBar must be translated to the navigation bar, no need to display a UITableView of suggested results. I don't know how to do that, too.
A button that, when tapped, flies in a modal from the bottom (I imagine it to be another ViewController with a grouped UITableView), to allow the user to choose from defined locations. Once selected, the modal closes and the button text is replaced with the selected location. This sounds much easier to do.
A header ("Item categories") and the list of categories, which may change in number. If the parent isn't a grouped UITableView, I think this part can be a UILabel and a non-scrolling UITableView with a height that changes depending on how many cells it has. If there are plenty table cells that don't fit given the screen's height, everything below the navigation bar can be scrolled vertically. That, I also don't know how to do.
If anyone can just guide me to what native iOS components I can use to build the above screen, and maybe a couple of tutorials to the things I just said I don't know how to do, I'd appreciate it.
You said it right .All the basic info you need is with you.
To build a searchbar like that i dont think you have to subclass it.
Bottom comprises of tableview.
Actually these Questions are seperately available in SO itself.So search seperately for your needs and you can achieve whatever you want
One basic principle : You cant achive anything by just thinking.Trying and get to it and if you have any issues look forward at it.All the issues will have an answer on the way.
Lots of components you need there.. Search Bar, UIPickerView and UITableView. I would like to give you some pointers.
1) You can refer http://www.appcoda.com/how-to-add-search-bar-uitableview/ for Search bar
2) When clicking on the Button, you can bring up a UIPickerView instead of another controller. For that you can refer http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/An_iOS_5_iPhone_UIPickerView_Example
3) You can use a normal Tableview with a single section, configure the section header to display Item categories.
You are asking too much to ask how to do every component of your UI. I will just answer a little.
Yes, a grouped table view is a good design. I am using a grouped table view for varying types of input. I have an actual table, with rows that can be added, and deleted, and contain an editable text area. Then I have three groups that only really show one piece of content each: two are sliders and one is a switch.
For choosing the location, pushing another view controller on your navigation stack would be the more typical way to handle it. You will save some effort that way, with some buttons and behaviors built in, but a modal view controller is not much harder. I'm not sure if you can make a navigation view fly in vertically, but does your app have to be frame-for-frame identical to the android version?
I'm writing an iPhone app (which will be my first ios app) that has about 50 screens, each of which has the same background - where the background is an image covering the entire screen real estate and another image at the top as a banner.
Each screen will have some text along with 0, 1, 2 or 3 buttons appearing beneath the banner image.
What is the best design for putting this together?
The options I could think of were (in every each I was planning on having a root controller which is responsible for displaying each view as appropriate).
1) Have 50 separate screens as xibs (and associated view controllers), each of which contains the two background images plus however many buttons each particular screen needs.
2) Have 4 superclasses as xibs - (representing no buttons, 1 button, 2 button, 3 buttons) and have each of those contain the background images and as many buttons as appropriate. Then have 50 subclasses which simply just set the text and button content as appropriate using the superclasses instance variable outlets.
3) Have the root controller have a view which contains the two background images which is there permanently, and each of the 50 views displays its text and buttons on top of that.
4) (If this is possible, I need to check if a window can have images). Same as 3, except the root controller doesn't have a view, the main window displays the background images and each class displays its text and buttons on the top of this. So each view controller would have to load and display the text and button objects using code (in which case there's not much point to have xibs for them).
Is there another solution? Is one of these the "best" solution?
If I went with 3 would it not be possible to define the position text and buttons in a xib? (because in order to do so they would need a parent view in order to position them in interface builder, but if that were the case then when the view is drawn the background wouldn't be visible).
If 4 is possible, then the root controller has no view, therefore does it still need to be descended from UIViewController, or could it simply be descended from NSObject?
I think at the moment I am leaning towards option 2) as that way I can design all the views visually as xibs, but there are only 4 of them. Unless there is a better more elegant solution.
TIA
What you can do, is one XIB with all the buttons and then you would set then hidden accordingly. Although it would tie you up a bit. The 2) option is more flexible. The 3) is ok too. You could have one rootViewController, just to hold the images and then you could something like this:
[rootViewController.spaceForMyChildView addSubview: myNewViewController.view];
The "spaceForMyChildView" would be a view that would hold your child views.
I would do fusion between 2) and 3) probably.
UIWindow inherits from UIView, so can have anything within it. So (4) is feasible, though you're starting to get into tricky water if you want to support any sort of view rotation.
I'd think an inverted (2) would be the easiest thing — have a single superclass that upon viewDidLoad adds the background and top banner programmatically. Have your specific controllers inherit from that and design them graphically to contain whatever you want, mindful that the image and banner will subsequently be added.
That said, if your views are really as simple as a single text area and up to three buttons, always with fixed positions, then it sounds like a single view that repopulates its fields from a data source, as Jacky Boy suggests, is probably the smartest thing.
This seems to me as though it would be a common problem, but I can't seem to find the answer anywhere. This question seems to address the issue, but I can't seem to get the solution to work and I'm not sure it's referring to Xcode 4.
When using Interface Builder in Xcode 4 and working with a UIScrollView, is there a way to scroll the view down in Interface Builder itself to view/add/edit controls that are out of the viewable section of the screen? I've managed to push a couple controls down using the arrow keys, but now I can't see them and therefore can't manipulate them in Interface Builder. Scrolling the view in IB would be first prize, but if there's a way to even select the controls using a drop-down menu or whatever so I can push them back up with the arrow keys, that would at least be something. Thanks.
Set the ViewController's Simulated Size to Freeform and set a very large height. E.g: 1000 and voilà! You can now scroll to see all the stuff and add even more! :)
P.S: Remember to set set Fixed when you are finish to avoid problems!
Just a workaround which helps in Xcode4:
Expand the Objects Panel which resides on the left of the Interface Builder view (there is the tiny arrow at the bottom of the panel).
Drag your UIScrollView from the view hierachy and place it on the top level.
Now you can resize it to access more content (scrolling to that content did not work for me).
When you are done adding child views to the scrollview, you need to resize it back to be smaller or the same size as the parent view.
After your changes you would need to put back the scroll view where it belongs in your hierachy
I typically do the following when I want to (have to) build a long scrolling screen:
Set the size of the View Controller to Freeform
Set the height of the top level View to something very large
Arrange all the controls that I want on the View
Select all the controls
Select Editor->Embed In->Scroll View
Set the size of the View Controller back to normal (typically Inferred)
Well, there are a few different things you can do. There is a list of items in your view you can open on the left of the workspace by clicking the button that looks like a little play button on the toolbar. Double clicking any item selects it so you can use the arrow keys.
The best option is to use the layout panel (typically on the right) and enter position values manualy. Sometimes I will use this to move my scrollview up to where I can see where I'm working then move it back.
I found a solution although you have to use a Table view controller. If you define the table as static, the scroll works in interface builder when the table is bigger than the windows size. Moreover, a standard view can be added to the top and bottom of the table, these views are scrollable as well. The scroll is made once the controller is selected. I hope you find this trick useful.
I know this isn't exactly what you were looking for, but I always just drag the scroll view out of the view controller onto the "pasteboard" where you can resize it at will and see the whole thing.
Once I make my edits I simply resize it to fit it's allotted space in my view and place it back in the view controller.
set the root view to freeform and ~1000 pt height, go through the child views and set them to this height as well(including scroll view), in the viewdidload method set the height to the appropriate size.
I have designed a custom tabbar and the developer says the design I created can't be done.
The screen is made up of a usual background with a tabbar. I'd like my tabbar to look a little different to the usual iPhone style. I would like at the bottom of the tabbar a grass illustration (transparent) and on top would sit all the separate buttons and on top of those would be the icons. All of these images (as seen in link below) are separate .png files.
When the user scrolls the content, it will scroll under the transparent grass. The buttons of course will be clickable and have a different view for an active state.
Please see the link below to see a mock-up of the image:
http://www.stuartkidd.com/dummy.jpg
I'd appreciate if the community could explain to me if this could be done and if so, how. I thought it would have something to do with 'creating a custom tabbar'.
And a further question, if it can be done, can also the tab buttons be horizontally
scrollable with a swipe action?
Thanks,
It all can be done but you are going against the Iphone UI guidelines. You won't be able to leverage the UITabbarView to do what you want so you'll basically have to write the whole thing from scratch. Your tab bar would be a scroll view with a row of buttons representing each tab. When a button is clicked you load in the appropriate view. The UITabBar controller gives you a lot of functionality for free and I suspect once you start working towards this you'll see exactly how much extra work this will end up costing you. Going against the way Apple does things can be a slippery slope.
Another idea might be to keep a hidden UITabBar to manage the tabs and call it from your custom tab bar. This would free you from a lot of the hassle of swapping views/controllers in and out.
You can create a row of custom buttons and have 2 subviews. One for the bottom navigation bar and one for the content view where you will be swapping your content based on what is pressed.
You can have a state which maintains what was clicked. Based on that you can set the button enabled state for every button in your bottom bar.
button.selected = YES
It will be easy to handle the touch up inside events and properly load appropriate views in and out of the bigger subview as they will be part of the same view controller.
I have implemented a similar functionality and it works well but still in process of submitting it to the app-store.
Just curious if the tab bar UI element in screenshots is some built in class or customized.
If it is customized, then please give me a hint on what classes I might check to have something like that.
The first screenshot is initial tab bar. When I tap on the last icon the tab bar smoothly(animated) resize itself as on second screenshot. If I press the edit button the icons are shaking(as on iPhone home) and I'm able to arrange them.
first
tab bar http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/3899/photo2aw.jpg
second
more buttons http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/5673/photo3kq.jpg
The tabbar in the top image could just be a standard tabbar with a non-standard color scheme.
The bottom image is a custom element most likely implemented in an UIActionSheet.
Gotta say, this is a butt ugly UI using non-standard (and therefore confusing) elements. I wouldn't suggest trying to emulate it.
Looks like it's custom. You might just want to look at subclassing UIView and putting a bunch of buttons it stored in a NSArray. That way, when you re-arange them, you just have to move the objects to a new position in the array.
You should be able to achieve the shaking by using simple UIView animations.