I'm designing a progress bar for an app that essentially is two UIImages - both are the exact same size (long rectangles with rounded corners), except they are colored differently.
The bottom bar is black and the progress bar that will fill over it is grey. Displaying the bottom bar is easy enough. The issue I'm trying to figure out is how to get the grey bar to display only a piece of itself.
For example....
grey : <-------
white: <------------------->
Essentially, I'd like to display only the first half of the grey bar because my progress is at 50%. I'd like to keep the rounded corners at the left of the image though.
Is it possible to dynamically crop UIImages?
The easiest way to do that is to create using 3 separated images: 2 with rounded corners (left and right), and one small easily resizable image to display progress.
And yes, you can crop images dynamically, but not as easy and as quick as need for progress bar.
Related
I updated this with an image of what I am trying to achieve, its a blur on a image which adds a touch of shading and even white on white is visible. I am basically working on putting buttons of various kinds on top of images and welcome's any and all assistance on best practices. I know facebook does this in some way as an app example.
To summarize what I am trying to achieve. I have an image that takes up the full screen and I would like to place a button on top of that image that does something like blur around it with padding so that it looks clean on top of the image. My button is a heart png, red outline with clear inside, and is represented as a square because of the irregular shape. I would like the heart to be on top of a circle that does something like blur the image so it can always be seen.
I found a number of similar solutions to this problem using UIBlurEffect but nothing that specifically addresses the "square image" and how I would control making the blur circle larger/smaller in terms of the padding around the square. I tinkered with creating a UIView that was transparent, placing a circle with a blur into there and then adding the button with their centers aligned but this seems like an incorrect approach and wasn't quite working. I suspect that for people with expertise this is something where I just need to have the correct usage of the UIBlurEffect.
I am looking for some general advice and maybe some example code of what I am trying to accomplish if anyone knows of any for an iOS swift project. I would like to either:
A) Make the background, of the blue view, gray and only show a certain percent of the blue area.
OR
B) Overlay the gray area on top of the blue view and just keep making gray area bigger.
What I am trying to do is simulate battery power and show a battery.
I've considered using a progress bar and doing option A, but the blue area is NOT a solid color. Its actually an image. I've tried using an image for the progress bar, but the image needs to keep its dimensions. (Ex: If progress shows 20% it needs to show only 20% of the image or "blue area", but if you use an image as the progress bar it just shrinks the image and still shows 100% of it instead of just the 20% I need to show).
You can easily write a custom self-drawing UIView that will behave in exactly the way you describe. In other words, you tell your UIView a percentage, and it redraws itself with the blue on the left and the gray on the right. You can even draw the darker gray stroke outline shown in your drawings. All easily accomplished in code.
I like being able to lay things out visually and take advantage of autolayout. Here's how I would do this (in a nib/storyboard):
Place a UIView on your canvas and give it the gray background. Give it whatever autolayout constraints are appropriate for you.
Place a UIView inside the one from #1 and give it the blue background. Anchor it's left, top, and bottom to the gray parent view and give it whatever width (doesn't matter).
Add an outlet to that width constraint you made in #2.
Now all you have to do is modify the "constant" property of that width constraint to give you the desired "progress". So if your gray view is 100 wide and you want to present "20%" progress, then just do "yourWidthConstraint.constant = 20".
I prepared some PNG icons, size 30*30, but with colors, not only black/white. The icons are OK when I want to display them on buttons.
It can't be shown in the tabbar.
I am wondering if the iphone only supports some simple icons (the black/white icons with lines).
Do you have any ideas?
Thanks in advance.
Michael
TabBar icons displayed in gray scale even if they are color, and iPhone uses the alpha channel for masking.
I recommend checking this site, most iPhone developers like it :
http://www.glyphish.com/
The alpha component of the image is all that is used to draw the icon on the tab bar. So you need to make sure your image has a alpha channel or it will either not show up or show up as a blank square in the tab bar.
This does mean that effectively only monochrome images can be used in the tab bar.
I'm not at my mac right now and I can't remember if it is 1.0 alpha or 0.0 alpha that shows up as white in the tab bar, or if you need to have a black or white background, but if you create an image with varying transparency it should be easy enough to work out.
I would like to change the color behind the flip from white to a different color or picture. Is that possible?
Change the background colour of the UIWindow in MainWindow.nib. Either "black" or "clear" should both work (I think...)
It's one of the first things I do to any app, otherwise you get bits of white showing on a view rotation (in the very old days of 2.x there were huge patches of white; they've since masked off the screen edges during a rotation, but a few pixels still show through) and when you show/hide the status bar (e.g. for UIImagePicker) and stuff. Black looks a lot better than white for the window background.
First, I'm not talking about icon libraries or mockup tools/libraries.
I'm familiar with various icon libraries that people have created, but other than the stuff from the example code like UICatalog, I'm wondering if anyone knows of anyone who has created free libraries of custom button bitmaps (stretchable button images), slider handle/track bitmaps, etc Basically bitmaps to customize the look of standard controls for those controls (like buttons and sliders) that allow you to specify such bitmaps.
I'm also interested in any photoshop tutorials/templates on/for creating stretchable custom button images, bitmaps for slider parts, etc. (Afraid I'm not a huge PS god or anything.)
Anyone know of any resources like this for fancying up the standard controls?
I've been able to find several stretchable buttons by searching through my collections of sample code for: "stretchableImageWithLeftCapWidth"
From the Apple sample code, the UICatalog, BubbleLevel, iPhoneMultichannelMixerTest, avTouch, AQOffilineRenderTest, and TouchCells sample code all contain buttons with stretchable images.
Hope this helps!
Stretchable buttons is no problem - there's nothing special you need to do in Photoshop. Just make the image of the button stretchable and set the radius to that of any rounded corners you have on the button graphic.
Slider parts - I'm pretty sure you'd have to make your own UIControl from scratch.
To make a button in Photoshop, create a new file with transparent background, select the Shape tool, rectangle near the bottom of the tools, drag out a rectangle. Size doesn't matter™. For a rounded rectangle, click and hold the same tool, choose the rounded rect shape and set a corner radies (same radius as in stretchableImage later).
Double-click the layer right of the layer name to get the layer style popup. Check Color Overlay and set the color you want. Check Inner Bevel and make its size somewhere below half the height of the rectangle - I think 90 degrees for the Global Angle works well. A lower opacity and larger size makes the bevel look less chunky.
Ctrl-click (option-click) the graphics rectangle in your layer to select the button's outline. Deselect the bottom half of it by using the marquee tool (M) at the top of the tools. Select a light gray foreground color, nearly white. Create a new layer with the square icon under the layer list (Windows->Layers if not visible). Fill the selection of the new layer with the paint bucket, and drag down opacity for the layer until the 'matte laquer' effect of it looks right.
A simple button, but that's the gist of it.