How do I show a loading bezel on the iPhone? - iphone

I'm building an application where it loads contents off of the web to populate a TableView.
I would like to add some sort of loading indicator so that the screen won't just contain the blank table.
I was thinking about something like this:
(source: iclarified.com)
I've been trying to look it up on documentation and Google, but to be honest don't know what to search for. Any pointers? Or is there any other way I should do this?

Two possible ways to do it:
The lazy way: Create a transparent PNG image containing the bezel and the loading... text. Display it on the screen and put a UIProgressView on top of it.
The better way: Use http://github.com/jdg/MBProgressHUD

You probably want the UIActivityIndicatorView
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/uikit/reference/UIActivityIndicatorView_Class/Reference/UIActivityIndicatorView.html

Related

How can I display structured text?

I have some text that I need to load from an XML file. The idea is to be able to make the text interactive. I should be able to tell when a user taps a piece of the text, like in the WordWeb app. I know this seems to be the kind of job that a UIWebView is for but I want to avoid generating HTML and implementing handlers for the hrefs. I hope that made any sense.
Another way could be using a UITableView with UITextViews or UILabels as content views for the cells. However, I couldn't find out how we can customize the appearance of the table view, add a border to the view for example.
The end result expected is a view that looks like a page from a book but pieces of the displayed text can be tapped and bookmarked etc.
Am I even thinking in the right direction?

Tab Like Selection

Can anybody please tell me how they have implemented the below thing whick looks to me like a TabBar but has something different from a simple tabbar.
The thing having "Offer" and "Wall", when each one is clicked, presents a different view.
Any sample code will be appreciated
Its a custom UIButton.
EDIT: What UI element might this be? (Custom tab-bar?). I had asked the same question a few weeks ago. There are two good answers there.
And google up for custom UIButton. You can find a few samples on your search
Its a custom view. You can always implement this kind of thing by using images. Say you have 2 different images. In one image offer is selected, and in another wall is selected. And you are using an image view to show them. An invisible button is placed in proper place. After tapping the button you can set the right image. And also if the images are not overlapping then you can use custom button.

how to display drop-down in iphone, like in this image

hi
I want to display drop down menu like the one you see in this image http://callingcard.marigoholdings.com/Screenshots.html#1
(below From and To)
How can i create that? Any good tutorial.
Best regards
You will have to use UIPicker for this purpose.This is used as a dropdown whereever needed in iPhone.
Please refer the link below
How to create drop down list box for an iphone app
Thanks
It looks like that app is using a combination of a UIWebView and an html select tag. To do something similar would involve a solid bit of html and javascript hackery, but in essence would be:
Create a UIWebView and inject the appropriate HTML into it to make the dropdown.
User uses dropdown as if it was in mobile safari and picks something.
When you need it, you use a javascript call with stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString: to grab the value of the dropdown by id and pass it back to your code.
There are a few gotchas here, mainly with constructing the dropdown and the webview such that it's big enough to show the expanded dropdown but transparent to see under it when the dropdown is not expanded, it's not scrollable, and that sort of thing.
I wonder if a UIActionsheet might be better ... you could easy make a button to call the sheet. Adding multiple buttons to the sheet transforms it into a table that you can scroll.

Best approach for adding non-web links to UITextView

I am creating a dictionary-style app that presents a tableview full of words, and when a word is selected, a UITextView is displayed that shows the definition of the word. What I would like to do is add a line that says "See also: synonym1, synonym2" where synonym1 and synonym2 are links that will take the user to the definition for the synonym that is touched.
What is the best way to add these dynamic links? Buttons? Somehow add a small UIWebView a UItable on the fly?
Thanks!
I would replace your UITextView with a UIWebView and use that contain your description text and your links. It's fairly trivial to generate HTML on the fly for something like that.
You could register a custom URL scheme for your app, or you could intercept links as they're clicked.
If your links are always grouped together there's no reason why you couldn't use a bunch of UIButtons inside a custom view, but then you'd have to handle layout and wrapping on your own. It seems a lot easier to do it in HTML.

What's the best layout for a scrollable iPhone "detail view" with variable content?

I'm building a navigation controller based iPhone application and am curious how to go about building the detail view for my application. The part that's complicating my endeavor is: What UI elements/hierarchy should I employ to create a variable-height yet scrollable detail view?
A great example of my goal is an arrangement like the mobile App Store detail view. The horizontal divisions between the heading, description, screenshot, etc leads me to believe it's a table view in disguise, but that's just a guess.
Currently, I'm using a UIScrollView for my detail view, but since I can never be sure of the exact length of my incoming content, my description view ends up with either unused space or truncated text. Is there some set of elements that would be best suited for displaying this variable-height content in "blocky" format (like the example) while still maintaining overall view scroll-ability?
Thanks in advance for your assistance!
If you want to be able to easily format complex content you can use a UIWebView. What I basically do is create an HTML template and add it as a resource. At run time I load the content of this HTML doc and do string replacement to add the content I want. Within the HTML I place placeholders like
<div><!-- ARTICLE_TITLE --></div>
I don't think the App Store detail view is a UITableView. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's a subclass of UIScrollView.
To determine the size of your content, you can use NSString's sizeWithFont method.
A little late, but still relevant: The App Store broke a few weeks ago, and the "Featured" tab of the App Store was very obviously HTML without CSS applied. So, it's actually a UIWebView, or web content displayed in some fashion.
The touch-down behaviors of the iTunes app, while appearing quite similar, behave differently, in a more native fashion. I'm not convinced this app is implemented in the same way.