i*-sdk: Placing a bubble on top of all controls - iphone

I've got a problem thats been perplexing me for a while. I have a custom control for the iPhone sdk. When the user touches the control I want to draw a small bubble above the users touch position with some information in it. A bit like a thought bubble in a cartoon.
Initially I've done it by adding a UIView subview to the control. However if I use the control where I don't have control of the z-order, for example in a table view, then the bubble will be drawn under other controls.
I've looked around but I'm not sure how to approach this problem. Everything I've read seems to indicate that you need to know the tree structure of the controls. Ideally I'd like to apply it to some layer that sits over the window as a whole, but I'm not sure how. I've also look at core graphics but cannot see any obvious answers.
Does anyone have any ideas of perhaps something they can point me at which will help.
Thanks

If you want to add a UIView to the 'top window', you can use the application UIWindow for that.
UIWindow is a subclass of UIView, so you can just use - (void)addSubview:(UIView *)view to add the new view to the window.
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] keyWindow] addSubview:yourView];

You could try adding it as a subview of the window, though, I don't think that's the most appropriate solution.
Personally, I would add my control as a subview to whichever view (maybe a table cell) and then tell that view to bring your control to the front.
[tablecell bringSubviewToFront:myControl];
That way, when you display your bubble, it'll be on top.

Related

Forcing a UIImageView to Remain in Front of an Active Animation

Language: Swift, IDE: Xcode for iOS development, Single View Application > View Controller...
I have 2 UIImage Views with identical images that I'm scroll-animating from left to right across the view in order to create a 'slowly-moving background' of sorts. I'd like to place other UI elements (Labels, other images, etc.) in the foreground of this repeating background animation, but find when I run the simulator the foreground image isn't seen...
Question: Is it possible to force other UI elements to stay in front of a repeating animation programmatically?
I'm not at my Mac so I can't share my code at the moment, but if you know a straight answer to the question and/or which method could best achieve this, I'm all ears!!
Thanks in advance! :)
This depends on the z-ordering of the views. Assuming you are adding all of your views then starting the animation call bringSubViewToFront on the view you are animating right before you start animating it. If you are laying things out in interface builder the Z order is based on top = farthest and bottom = closest. If you are adding view programmatically the newest view is always added in front. You can change this with insertSubview:at: and the related methods. Take a look at the documentation for UIView.
If you want z-index use:
YourImageViewName.layer.zPosition = 1
Also you could play with bringToFront method on the parent view:
self.view.bringSubviewToFront(YourImageViewName)
Hope this fix your problem.

Safari Reader font-size control like popover

Safari has a nice popover that is used for controlling the font size. I'm talking about that one:
It's pretty nice, and my question is - how to implement something exactly like this?
Thank you!
There are many projects in github about popoverview, such as this https://github.com/takashisite/TSPopover
One way to implement this is to add a transparent view that takes up the whole screen so that when I touch outside the popover content, it'll dismiss. And the rest you need to do is just add some subviews to your transparent view.
Simple Really, If you want to use a popover then you can see this code PopOver Link
Or you can simply create a UIView containing 2 buttons , let this UIView rollout an animation whenever the UIButton on the bar is clicked and so on and so forth. Let me know for further queries :)

Updatable, custom view on a UIToolbar

I want to make a small area to present some information in the middle of a UIToolbar and was wondering what the best way to do this is.
I need to show some text and a graphic, both of which need to be updated (around every 3 seconds) as new information arrives. The graphic is similar to the iPhone signal strength indicator, so it can be either custom drawn or selected from one of 3 graphics (low, medium, high strength).
I'll probably use initWithCustomView: to create a UIBarButtonItem, although I would like the view to be clickable (to allow the user to change the information shown).
What's the best way to make that view? Can I use a NIB, or do I need to do custom drawing in the view? What's the best way to update the buttons? I'm assuming that I'll have to remake the toolbarItems array each time and set it when the information changes. Is there a cleaner way to do this? Thanks.
Using initWithCustomView: sounds like a good way to go. You can create your custom view any way you want: with a NIB, by drawing it, even using images. It can also have its own subviews. It can be any object that inherits from UIView. (So, if you wanted, you could even make it actionable by using a UIButton, a custom UIControl, or a custom UIView with a gesture recognizer attached.)
You shouldn't have to remake toolbarItems (or, for that matter, do anything with it after you've added all your button items) if you just keep a pointer to your custom view UIBarButtonItem. It could be an instance variable. Then, to update the custom view, you could access it as you would any other view. I've never actually tried this, but I can't see any problem with doing it.
You sound like you had it mostly figured out. Hope this is helpful.
I needed the same solution and was hoping for some code examples from you. So I ended up doing it all in IB and the steps are here as follows:
Create UItoolbar in IB with no Items. (A Bar Button Item will be added again once you add the UIView)
Add UIView as subview of UIToolbar
Add UILabels to subview of UIView that is already a subview of the UIToolbar.
Create IBOutlets from UIToolbar, UIView and each UILabel and then you can reference the labels in your app.
I did set the backgrounds to clearColor so the text appears on top of UIToolbar without any box or borders.
And the text updates dynamically which was the desired outcome.
Hope this helps someone as this has been eluding me for a while.

Swipe to change UIViewContent

Hej folks,
I got an UIView in my application and want to implement kind of a swipe gesture. I know how I detect this gesture (touchesBegan: and touchesEnded: for example is x coordinates are distanced more than 100 pixels or something else) but I really donĀ“t now how to animate my needs. In fact my UIView will contain subviews which are 9 UIButtons. On swipe I want to change the set of buttons programatically...any solutions out there? Primarily need the animation!
EDIT: I thought about programatically moving the buttons off-screen to the left and at the same time move the new ones on-screen from the right side. But it seems I don't really know how to realize this...isn't it too much leaking at the same time? Please give me a hint!
It's seem that you want to recreate somethings like the springboard but with button instead of icon.
I can suggest you to use UIScrollView.
why you don't load just a new view with the other button set in your window after the swipe gesture was detected?

How to create a full-screen modal status display on iPhone?

I'm trying to create a modal status indicator display for an iPhone app, and would like one similar to this one used in Tweetie:
Specifically, this one "shades out" the entire screen, including the toolbar. I don't believe through any normal UIView manipulation, I can extend past the bounds of my window, can I? I believe I've seen a status indicator like this somewhere else on iPhone, possibly when I added an Exchange e-mail account.
I've tried subclassing UIAlertView and overriding its drawRect method. If I don't call [super drawRect:] it doesn't ever display the normal UIAlertView text box, however my drawing rectangle is in an odd size and position.
Anyone have any advice to accomplish this?
Check out MBProgressHUD.
Take a look at the source code to the WordPress application. They have code which you can basically drag and drop into your application to do this.
http://iphone.wordpress.org/development/
I haven't done this myself, but you could layer a UIView at the top of the view hierarchy, and use setHidden to dynamically show or hide it. Since it's at the top of the stack, it should be able to intercept all touch events.