Create semi-transparent overlay to mimic UIAlertView or UIActionSheet? - iphone

In the iPhone app that I am currently developing, I present several "alert" views that mimic the behaviour of UIAlertView and UIActionSheet. These views require non-standard elements that are not available in UIAlertView or UIActionSheet. Rather than attempt to subclass either, I have created my own classes so that I can easily customize the look and feel of the alerts.
The one problem I am having with this is that I am having trouble fading the iPhone screen when the alert views are presented. I would like to fade out the whole screen (including the status bar) when presenting my custom views in the same way that UIAlertView and UIActionSheet do. I am trying to accomplish this by overlaying a semi-transparent view over the whole screen, but regardless of whether I add the view as a subview of the keyWindow or the topmost view, the status bar never gets shaded.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to accomplish this? This seems like something that should be simple to do, so I'm probably overlooking something.

I haven't done this, but if you want to overlay anything over the status bar, I'd say you'll have to create a UIWindow instance and set its windowLevel to UIWindowLevelStatusBar. Or find the status bar window in the view hierarchy and add a semi-opaque subview to it.

Related

iPhone Swipe UIKeyboard to Switch Views

I want to achieve something like this with my application and its keyboard.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajs1p5NCNw4 from 1:32 - 1:38.
How can you hide your keyboard by swiping it horizontally and show another view on its place? Is it possible with default keyboard or should I create my own view with few buttons which I'll need and then add the swiping? (I know how to do this, but I'm not sure if apple wouldn't deny the app in app store because I implement my own keyboard or something like that)
Those are custom views. It might be a scroll view with paging enabled and two subviews (the numerical keypad is one subview and items view is the other subview).
The app might be using the custom view in place of the system keyboard, by setting the inputView property of a text field for example. Or it might just be displaying the custom view as a subview of its top-level view.

iOS Bubble Popup Menu similar to ITunes

Could anyone provide some guidance on how to implement that speech-bubble like popup menu when you click "More" in the IPhone IPod application toolbar?
I think you are looking for UIPopoverController. Popover controllers are just containers for view controllers: write a view controller that does what you want, and you're set. But this is for iPad. If you want this for iPhone, then read on. I have put up some solutions.
You could even explore UIActionSheet but UIPopOverController gives more flexibility.
I believe you are talking about something like this ?
Here are some solutions you could adopt -
Forgot that you wanted this for iPhone, Have a look at the iPhone UIPopoverController implementation: WEPopover
On iPhone you would generally use a UIActionSheet for a stack of buttons like that. It slides up from the bottom, rather than popping up next to the button, but that's the standard behavior on iPhone.
Or you could manually instantiate a UIView using a custom background image or drawing with transparency, add some UIButtons (or other type of custom view) on top, and also somehow handle all touches outside that view.
Note that is is non-standard UI. An actionsheet would be more HIG compliant.

Replacing UINavigationControllers NavigationBar with UIView

I am developing app that has multiple skins and I have a dilemma on how to implement this.
One of the solutions would be to have separate nib files for every skin, and load it depending on which skin is currently selected. Problem with this is that I can't edit navigation bar of navigation controller (which my app uses), and I have to change it's background image and back button image etc.. I came up with an idea to hide this navigation bar on every screen and replace it with custom UIView in Interface Builder which will act as navigation bar and custom back button with IBAction for popping current View Controller, so that user won't see any difference.
Is this approach acceptable and if I make it this way, will I have problems with rejection in App Store?
If you choose to hide & replace the UINavigationBar with your own UIView it's no problem as far as Apple goes.
However, I can tell you that you will have to spend some time trying to replicate some visual effects that come naturally with UINavigationBar.
For example, when you push/pop a new controller, you will see that the navigation bar title will slide & fade beautifully. The same applies for left and right bar items.
Personally I would not completely hide the UINavigationBar, but customize it. In the end it all depends on what you want, but by default the UINavigationBar is pretty customizable.
You can add your own buttons or even entire UIViews as left and right bar items. Also, you can add your own UIView as the title (with your own label, custom font or whatever) or change the background.
EDIT:
To easily customize the looks in your entire application, you can subclass UINavigationController and create your own CustomUINavigationController. Then, in viewDidLoad method you can change whatever you want to the navigation bar and this will be accessible in the entire application.
No way, what you are doing is perfect. This will work & no way it will get rejected from app store (just based on this approach). I too have explored several ways to provide skins & what you wrote seemed to be the least hassle-some. Plus its way more easier to create UI elements in Interface Builder hence the separate nib files for different skins.
I am saying this so confidently 'coz I have done the same thing & app store approved.
Best of luck.

Current UIView Questions iPhone SDK

I posted earlier but am running into similar problems again. Basically the way that my app is setup there is a top bar that is basically just a static image that has UIButtons placed on top of it. That is the Main View Controller and is persistent no matter what view is shown beneath it. I can't use a navigation controller because it is not possible to change the height and I need the bar to be significantly larger than a navbar. However my bar is functioning in much the same way. There is a "Home" Button, a "Back" Button and several destination buttons.
I understand how to switch views from say the home screen. My confusion comes with the back button. In order to press back the app is going to need to know what view is currently being displayed so that it can be removed from view and a new subview can be added. Ideally I would use the UINavigationController so that I can push and pop views which is really what I want to do here, however that is not possible because of the visual problem.
Does anybody know of a method that returns the current displayed view so I could do something like the following
[currentview.view removeFromSuperView];
[self.view insertSubview:experienceViewController.view atIndex:0]
You can use UINavigationController with the nav bar hidden. Put the nav controller inside a view that does have your jumbo toolbar and you'll have access to the push/pop behavior you're looking for.

UITabBarController Hide Show Bars with animation like the Photo APP

i'm having a real trouble with UITabBarController. I have a simple foto app, and I'm trying to simulate almost the same behaviour as the PhotoApp from the Iphone
the main view controler is the tabbar itself, i also have a NavBar and a status bar on top.
What i want is on tap to hide the bars (not with timer, just on tap).
The photo is actually an UIScroll view that zooms the photo or makes it again 1:1. that part already works,
I've tried before pushing the view to the navbar to set the hidesBottomBarWhenPushed and well it works, but i can't set a custom animation, and that's not the real problem , I can't show again the bars, they dissapear and i don't know how to reshow them, i'm sure i'm probably missing someting very obvious, but as my experience in obj C is little like half a year part time, i thought i asked here as stackoverflow seems to get the answers :)
Something to investigate: the Three20 project: http://github.com/facebook/three20 - it includes a completely clone of the photo-browsing app in component form.
But without Three20, you can't do this with a stock UINavigationController, because the UIViewController that you're using is a subview of the UINavigationController. You need to make a sibling view on another layer. To do this, make a parent UIViewController which has two subviews: your photo, and a UIToolbar. You can hide and display the UIToolbar by setting it's hidden property, and make sure it's above the photo view with [parent.view bringSubviewToFront:toolbarController] (where parent is the main UIViewController that contains both the photo view and the UIToolbar)