I discovered somewhat by accident that if you make a UIButton in Interface Builder and type in Plus in the image field, a + image appears for the button. A similar result comes from typing Minus.
I am wondering if this is a bug, or if there is some way the poor programmers can access the built-in general GUI images from other apple apps, such as the green +, the red -, the detail disclosure chevron, the big red "Delete Contact" or similarly styled button, etc.
Has anyone else encountered this, or know where to access these things in Xcode?
It makes sense to me that they should be usable, cause the Apple HIG seems to be all about making things recognizable and intuitive, and using them the way other apps use them.
You can get the UITabBarItems and once there search for UIBarButtonItem. Scroll towards the bottom of the screens and you can see all the system images for Tab Bars and Navigation Bars.
I found an up-to-date (iOS7) list of icons for UIBarButtonSystemItem on the official iOS Developer Library, which could be helpful.
UIBarButtonSystemItemDone
UIBarButtonSystemItemCancel
UIBarButtonSystemItemEdit
UIBarButtonSystemItemSave
UIBarButtonSystemItemAdd
UIBarButtonSystemItemFlexibleSpace
UIBarButtonSystemItemFixedSpace
UIBarButtonSystemItemCompose
UIBarButtonSystemItemReply
UIBarButtonSystemItemAction
UIBarButtonSystemItemOrganize
UIBarButtonSystemItemBookmarks
UIBarButtonSystemItemSearch
UIBarButtonSystemItemRefresh
UIBarButtonSystemItemStop
UIBarButtonSystemItemCamera
UIBarButtonSystemItemTrash
UIBarButtonSystemItemPlay
UIBarButtonSystemItemPause
UIBarButtonSystemItemRewind
UIBarButtonSystemItemFastForward
UIBarButtonSystemItemUndo
UIBarButtonSystemItemRedo
UIBarButtonSystemItemPageCurl
Related
It seems that I am always fighting with UIAlertView to make it do what I want. I'm done fighting - are there any robust UIAlertView replacements with the following features, or will I need to write my own?:
ability to customize the alert-view size/position
ability to change the layout of the
buttons (stacked vs. side-by-side)
ability to prompt users for input via UITextField or UITextView
resizing / repositioning behavior
when the keyboard appears
ability to have a UITextView for
scrolling text
pixel-perfect copy of UIAlertView for
basic display
ideally interface compatible with
UIAlertView - i.e. it is a drop-in-replacement.
I've found a few blog and stackoverflow posts which implement customizations on a UIAlertView - this is NOT what I want. Nor do I want a guide on how to implement a custom AlertView -- I know how, I just want to find one that is already community maintained. I want a ground-up replacement that is safe for App Store submission and future-proof against UIAlertView changes (yes, I've been burnt...)
Please respond with comments if you have suggestions for other desirable features.
Answering my own question.
I searched high and low for a prefab UIAlertView project that offered the features I was looking for. I'm sure they exist -- I've seen apps with great alerts. Their authors must not be sharing - which is totally fine, I understand.
So I wrote my own. TSAlertView is a ground-up implementation of a modal alert view that is interface-compatible with UIAlertView. In terms of visual look, while it is not a pixel-perfect copy, it comes very close. The features it offers are basically what I outlined in the original question:
ability to set the display-width and max-height of the alert view. This allows me to have nicer looking alerts on iPad.
ability to specify the layout of the buttons (stacked vs. side-by-side), even if there are only two buttons. This always bothered me with UIAlertView -- if I had two buttons they were always placed side-by-side. A big problem if the button text didn't fit.
ability to prompt users for input via a UITextField. Once in a while you just need a quick and dirty way to prompt the user to enter something.
resizing / repositioning behavior when the keyboard appears. (happens when prompting for user-input)
ability to have a UITextView for scrolling text. Can explicitly set this option instead of relying on UIAlertView to swap in a UITextView for long text.
near pixel-perfect copy of UIAlertView for basic display.
support for custom backgrounds
is interface compatible with UIAlertView - i.e. it is a drop-in-replacement.
I've used a handful of great open-source projects in my code in the last year. My two favorites are MBProgressHUD and MGSplitViewController, each hosted at github. I decided to share TSAlertView in the same manner.
https://github.com/TomSwift/TSAlertView
The initial implementation surely has some bugs. I haven't used it in a shipping project yet, but I am using it in my current project to be completed in a few weeks. If you want to try using it yourself, please feel free. Post any issues on github, or better yet, submit a fix.
Enjoy!
Here are some screenshots showing 1) 2 stacked buttons 2) input capability 3) explicit width setting
Check out Smart Alert View, it's open-source.
Check my own Alert view replacement - get app here. https://github.com/FeminaErnest/GeekyFemi. Good luck
What can be used instead of tooltip in iphone app?
Best alternative of tooltip in touch screen systems?
Tooltips are generally reserved for operating systems that have a cursor. In touchscreen applications, tooltips should not be needed at all. When your application is in use, the user should always know where the menus are, what all of the buttons do, etc, simply because they have been labeled clearly with a text explanation or an image.
If you need the use of tooltips in your application, you need to rethink your design.
Be Succinct.
I believe tooltips are still viable in form of short timed message. For instance, you may show dialog when button can be single-clicked or long-pressed. How else would you describe to user that functionality. None of the solutions above seem to work in this case. I guess timed message, some kind of dialog and help file are only options. Or am I missing something?
You don't. Instead apply a stronger preference for text buttons over buttons with an icon. Sometimes a footer message describes the current status in more detail.
(this is just me, interpreting Apple app design as good practice)
Tooltips can be useful especially for icons or image that are not or cannot be labeled and also for multilingual apps where different text lengths must be taken into account. It's not always a question of rethinking your whole design, for me it depends on the context of your app. An design doesn't fail just because tooltips have to be added.
Safari on iPhone and iPad uses the method touch and hold on a link. This very near the actual hover and hold for desktop apps. This is also the direction we are looking at in my company.
Ref.:
http://developer.apple.com/library/safari/#documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/HandlingEvents/HandlingEvents.html
Regards,
I am trying to reach the following result
here
I know how to configure the segmented control but I was wondering how to get the same icons ... I tried to do it with photoshop but I just can't manage to achieve the same quality !
I heard there is a possibility to use the "Apple symbols font" available on Mac (which contains these icons), could you show me how to get these symbols ?
Or if you have a link to these precise icons (for free) It would be nice too.
Thank you,
ChaCha
The NavBar sample code in the apple developers page contains these two images and shows you how to implement them.
in my app i use a navigation controller and a tabBar for my views. The problem is that the titles that i have for the views are a little too long to fit.. they appear like in the photo below.
alt text http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/1524/picture2usx.png
could someone give any suggestions for resolving this problem? i tried subclassing UITabBarItem but i can't add a label as a subview, i can't change the font or size.. it looks ok when i have only 4 buttons but that is not ok because i need that more button. cutting down the names is not an option either, i don't think apple would like that.
thank you in advance.
As far as I can tell, there is no way to do what you want to do easily.
You could build some of the name string into your icon image. This will of course force you to internationalize your icon images, and you will also end up with the blue coloring in some of your text.
You could have no titles at all, and overlay your font-scaled title by drawing on the containing view. Note that when there is no title in the tab bar item, the following page will also have no title in the title bar.
Better by far, if you can do it, is to shorten the names. I know this is tough in German, but surely there must be alternatives.
I hope that Apple improves this in 4.0, but as those fonts are already fairly small, I sort of doubt it.
I want to introduce a custom pencil accessory image in a tabel cell and in the standard accessory righthand UITableViewCell position. The pencil image will be used to indicate that the text in the table cell can be edited via a popup modal full screen view.
Will Apple penalize this innovation during the app review process?
My justification is that the standard disclosure indicators do not convey the right meaning. According to the Apple HIG doc the ">" disclosure should present another more detailed list view and the the blue "+" disclosure button should reveal extra details about the selected table row.
I feel that opening a text edit view falls between the ">" and "+" usage, hence my pencil image idea.
Edit: Just to complete the picture, the table view has two fat rows. The upper row poses a multiline question and the lower row shows a text answer.
I don't think that Apple would penalize you for creating a custom button/icon. This is not something to concern. The problem here is to make you user understand what is the function of you custom icon, since they are used with the standard iPhone UI.
I my opinion for the functionality that you want to put on your icon, it would be better if you use the custom UI for editing table cell, that is presented on this image that I could find Googling (http://adeem.me/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/UITableView/AddDeleteReorderUITableView/Picture%202.png).
So, people are used to edit the content of table cells by using the edit button and after pick the current cell...than you can show the modal view, so the user can edit the content.
To have a better picture, compare your table cell with, for example, the Clock app.
Try to avoid custom controls as much as you can. if something exists on the standard UI, go for it it is easy for people to look and understand.
Imagine that in your browser the load icon, instead of this circular arrow, it was changed by "L" in the latest update, would be something tricky to us to understand a non-standard symbol.
Think about it and chose the most appropriated approach for your purpose.
Cheers,
VFN