Thanks to this post I now know how to make a table with different row heights on iPhone. (With UITableView)
How to do this on a Mac?
Should I use NSTableView? How about NSCollectionView? I feel like NSTableView is too complicated - at least much more complicated than UITableView. I mean, I don't need all the headers and stuff.
Here's an example. Imagine a todo list. Some todos can be pretty long and won't fit in one row. What would you do on iPhone, iPad and Mac?
NSTableView is the equivalent object to UITableView, though it is a bit more complicated. If you don't need headers you don't have to display them, anyhow.
Should I use NSTableView?
Yes.
How about NSCollectionView?
Yes.
It depends on what you're doing. If you're displaying a one-dimensional collection of objects, especially in a form similar to the Finder's icon view, then you want NSCollectionView. If you're displaying a table where each column displays an aspect of each row (e.g.: rows = people; columns = name, title, department, etc.), then you want NSTableView.
In an NSCollectionView, you can set the minimum and maximum item size as a property of the view, and you can set the size of each item as a property of the item.
In an NSTableView, you can set the height of a row by being the table view's delegate and responding to tableView:heightOfRow:. If you want to return the usual row height, ask the table view for its rowHeight and return that; if you want to return an unusual height, do so.
Personally, I find NSTableView easier to work with. You can set it up most if not all of the way in IB; about the only time you need to write any code is for custom drawing, double-click actions, or, yes, variable row heights.
For your to-do list example, I would use an NSTableView, with a checkbox button cell in one column for the “done” property.
Related
I'm trying to add spaces in between rows in an NSTableView, like how it looks here.
Currently, however, my rows look like this, with 0 spacing between them.
Is it possible to add these spaces? I found this post on how to do it, but that's for UITableView, and I don't think you can add sections with NSTableView. Another thing I tried was using intercellSpacing on the table view, like so:
tableView.intercellSpacing = NSSize(width: 0, height: 80)
However, that just increases the height of each row rather than increase the space between them.
Lastly, I looked into drawSeparator, which seems promising but has limited documentation. Would extending NSTableRowView and overriding the drawSeparator method work, basically by drawing in a blank space as the separator? If so, how would I go about making my table view use my custom row view class?
If none of these options work, I'd also be open to faking the effect, maybe by having the actual content of a row be smaller than the row itself and using the remaining space as the padding between rows. However, I'm not sure if this would work, given that right now I'm using NSShadow, which highlights the boundary of each row.
Found a way to work around this issue. Before, each row consisted of two columns, one for the text fields and one for the buttons. However, I've changed it by putting all the text fields and buttons into a single column, that way there's only one cell per row. I then can apply the NSShadow and other styles to the NSTableCellView rather than the NSTableRowView. This means that I can now use intercellSpacing to create vertical spacing between cells:
tableView.intercellSpacing = NSSize(width: 0, height: 80)
The rows are still touching, but I've disabled the borders/highlighting on them so you can't actually see them. The cells, on the other hand, are visible, and you can adjust the spacing/styles on them as necessary.
When creating a UITableViewController there are two situations that create an "ugly" UX
calling/open it without any data in it --> shows an empty table (i.e. empty rows,UITableViewCell, as many as fit in the window)
calling/open it with fewer rows of content that fit the window --> show the full rows followed by empty rows
I wish to receive the following result:
if there is no data show a picture or view with text - there isn't any data yet or something like that
show only the full lines and no more rows (blank or background image)
Is there a way to achieve that?
To add these effects, you will probably have to make your own UITableViewController from a regular UIViewController, and even subclass UITableView. If you have a regular UIViewController with your filler image/text as the background, you can place a UITableView on top and hook up the delegate/datasource. Now, in your code, detect when there is no data available and set the hidden property of the UITableView accordingly.
As for the following empty rows, you will either have to turn off the row separators (in IB), or subclass a UITableView (can't help you there). Good luck!
I'm using the sectionIndexTitlesForTableView method for my custom UITableView, to display A-Z on the side of my table. However, the standard view of this doesn't match the style of the table. Is there a way to change this, or at least move the index a little?
Here's how it overlaps:
I too tried the same thing..but not succedded.
but as a workaround we can introduce spaces before the text which we want to display as a section header, so that we can start index with some gap.
I'd like to add section headers to my grouped table view's sections but I'd like them to appear seamless (see image). The default, as we're all well aware of, is rounded top corners on the first row of a grouped table view cell so it ends up looking like crap when you merge them.
Any way to specify when indexPath.row = 0 that the UITableViewCell should use row style "middle" or something like that?
If not then what are my options? I guess I could scratch the section header and use Row 0 as a quasi-header then push my array data +1 to fill the rest of the table? I'd rather not roll my own from scratch...if possible.
Sample Table http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/8181/sampletable.png
Edit:
"Crap" looks like this:
alt text http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/9748/crapsection.png
Don't do what you're doing, it's against HIG
Ok, ok, I'll tell you how to do it:
You're going to want to do your own cell background views. The default grouped one is not what you want.
When a tableview asks you for a cell, set its backgroundView and selectedBackgroundView to something that looks appropriate for its place in the tableview.
Usually, this means a UIImageView with the appropriate image, though you can go wild here with a custom view, but there are gotchas.
So in your case, you would do
if (indexPath.row > sectionRowCount - 1) {
//Not the last row
//Put in the middle background
} else {
//Put in the end background
}
Then you'll want a custom table section header, but that's pretty easy.
In your case, you probably won't have to worry about when there's just one row, so that makes things even easier.
Take a look at the tutorial here:
cocoa with love basically what you need is 3 different images. One for the top row, one for the bottom, and a 3rd for the middle rows.
You could also not use the section header, but instead use a custom cell as the first cell of the section. So when ([indexPath row] == 0), return a custom cell that is the "header" and then return the "regular" cells (offset by one row) for the rest. You'll also have to make adjustments to the numberOfRowsInSection function to return +1.
I have a UITableView with some empty sections. I'd like the user to be able to move a row into them using the standard edit mode controls. The only way I can do it so far is to have a dummy row in my "empty" sections and try to hide it by using tableView:heightForRowAtIndexPath: to give the dummy row a height of zero. This seems to leave it as a 1-pixel row. I can probably hide this by making a special type of cell that's just filled with [UIColor groupTableViewBackgroundColor], but is there a better way?
This is all in the grouped mode of UITableView.
UPDATE: Looks like moving rows into empty sections is possible without any tricks, but the "sensitivity" is bad enough that you DO need tricks in order to make it usable for general users (who won't be patient enough to slowly hover the row around the empty section until things click).
I found that in iOS 4.3, the dummy row needs to have a height of at least 1 pixel in order to give the desired effect of allowing a row to be moved into that section.
I also found that the dummy row is only needed in the first and last section; any sections in between don't have this problem.
And it looks like in iOS 5.0, no dummy rows or special tricks are needed at all.
While managing the edit, you can monitor if the table view is in Edit Mode. Use that flag inside of cellForRowAtIndexPath to decide weather or not to display the 'blank' row. While in 'regular' mode, the row will not display, but when the user taps 'edit' cellForRowAtIndexPath should get called again and this time decide to display the row. The details of how to do that depend on your data source and how you are gluing it to the display. If you aren't getting the call again, you can manually inject rows with insertRowsAtIndexPaths / deleteRowsAtIndexPaths and/or call reloadData to force a refresh.
I found that if you return -1.0 from the heightForRowAtIndexPath method it will remove the 1 pixel line.