How to Create the Highlight/Note Popup Buttons from the iPhone Kindle - iphone

I am wondering how Amazon did the highlight/note popup buttons in the Kindle app. After reading about UIPasteboard, UIMenuController, UIResponder, and UIResponderStandardEditActions, I am able to turn on or off standard edit actions (i.e. copy, cut, paste, select, and selectAll). However I haven't found a way to add a custom action yet. I would really appreciate it if I could get a pointer.
Thanks in advance!
Chris
(source: sampletheweb.com)
Edited by balexandre (added image instead link)

It looks like Amazon implemented their own custom view that mimicked the appearance of UIMenuController. I believe they did this rather than use SPI because if you click and hold on the Highlight cell, the arrow does not highlight, when it does in the real UIMenuController.

I don’t think there is a public interface to these controls, you’d probably have to code them yourself. (Or maybe figure out the private API, but that’s a slippery slope.) I am not sure about that, though, maybe somebody will prove me wrong.

That's a good point about the arrow part of the Notes/Highlight popup menu not highlighting, so they must be implementing their own.
However they are also obviously using a UIWebView, because it's recognizing tap and hold and they can highlight the text, and you can't get touch events from a UIWebView, much less get the information about what's selected. So how are they doing that?
This would be very useful for us to be able to do as well.

Use DTMenuController http://www.drobnik.com/touch/2010/01/dr-touchs-parts-store/
Costs 100 EUR ^_^

Custom menu items can be added via the UIMenuController's menuItems property. See Apple's UIMenuController docs.

the javascript part can be managed with jQuery, that's a fair simple and powerful library. i'm using it for resizing and rearranging things in a webview and it works great :)

Related

How would one implement a sliding 2 button menu like this from Lift?

http://imgur.com/3ZBCsDn
Can't post the image on the site but there it is.
I have been trying to find if this is a template or a separate nib file ala the page turn animation. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
That is called a UIActionSheet. It is created entirely in code, so it's limited to some pretty simple stuff (i.e. a few buttons, one of which is the cancel button, and one of which can be marked "destructive"). Just consult the documentation for the UIActionSheet class; it tells you all there is to know about it.
Also, here's the discussion in my book:
http://www.apeth.com/iOSBook/ch26.html#_action_sheet

iPhone dev: Creating sliding drawers like Path and Facebook apps

The new Facebook app seem to have done away with the grid-icon layout, with a more interesting custom navigation layout where the bottom-most view shows all the options (like Profile, News Feed, Messages etc for Facebook) and clicking on one of them brings another view sliding over the top. You can press the 3-lines button to then expose the bottom-view again, but the current view is partially visible. The Path app also recently updated to match this scheme.
What's the best way to recreate this? I've searched for any open-source options but haven't found them. Three20 doesn't seem to support this either.
Another option that I wrote: ECSlidingViewController
It has support for orientation changes like Facebook and sliding to the left like Path.
Video demo: http://vimeo.com/35959384
Code: https://github.com/edgecase/ECSlidingViewController
Try These from Cocoa Controls:
JTRevealSidebar http://cocoacontrols.com/platforms/ios/controls/jtrevealsidebar
clcascade http://cocoacontrols.com/platforms/ios/controls/clcascade
StackScrollView http://cocoacontrols.com/platforms/ios/controls/stackscrollview
Many more on the same site like:
http://cocoacontrols.com/platforms/ios/controls/mfslidingnavigationcontroller
http://cocoacontrols.com/platforms/ios/controls/psstackedview
I found a really nice project on github:
https://github.com/devindoty/DDMenuController
Everything I've seen on the internet and those recommended by Yosi Taguri are all way too complicated. Drawers can be achieved by a very simple category to UINavigationController with no graphics asset whatsoever and no class extension needed, and backwards compatible with iOS 3.0!
Take a look a this:
http://code.google.com/p/drawer-navigation-controller/
Here is a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T-1-_pFbG0
This project (not mentioned above) looks like the most mature and polished to me: https://github.com/gotosleep/JASidePanels
Also, seems to still be active.
Edit: I have since transitioned to: https://github.com/mutualmobile/MMDrawerController which IMO is an almost perfect implementation.
Check my answer here - SplitView like Facebook app on iPhone - which contains a list of open-source codes.
if anyone's wondering which one to choose among JTReveal and DDMenu, I'd suggest DDMenucontroller over JTRevealSidebar (haven't used the other options listed by #Yosi). Its a lot simpler, lighter and works exactly the way the Path app works (and it is easier to modify to suit your requirements). Havent seen the issue of black background mentioned by #Henning
My project FRLayeredNavigationController on GitHub goes in about the same direction.
(The spacing between the layers is easily configurable and it supports rotation of course).
Have a look at the demo videos/screenshots:
http://youtu.be/v_tXD_mL05E
http://youtu.be/q66HX2td_uc
https://github.com/weissi/FRLayeredNavigationController/raw/master/FRLayeredNavigationControllerScreenshot1.png
https://github.com/weissi/FRLayeredNavigationController/raw/master/FRLayeredNavigationControllerScreenshot2.png
Here's another one: PPSlideDrawer.
http://www.localwisdom.com/blog/2013/05/simple-sliding-drawer-implementation-for-ios/
I checked out #Ephraim's answer (http://code.google.com/p/drawer-navigation-controller/) because it seems pretty easy to work with. The problem, it seems, with drawer-navigation-controller is that the swiping animation does not follow the user's finger--it is automated. PPSlideDrawer aims to solve that. I'm about to try it out in my project and will post some updates.
Might be a dealbreaker for some that the following are still under "TODO:"
Implement auto open functionality.
Implement swipe from edge functionality(rather than just detect panning gesture).
Landscape support.
Here is one thats very easy to implement and use with storyboards. It has control for shrinking, show hide animations, and direction.
https://github.com/HelloMihai/HMSideDrawerDirectional

Providing un-intrusive messages on an iPhone

This is kind of a silly question, but I cannot find the answer as I don't know the terms with which to search for it.
I am looking for a simple way of giving a 'status' message like 'Data updated' to the user without necessarily interrupting what he/she is doing (but have a option I guess in some instances to tab it an perform an action).
For example; some Apps give a rounded square semi-transparent with 'Lock screen/rotation' when an iPhone is rotated, I am look for something similar (or like the square box 'Build Complete in Xcode 4').
Is there an easy way of doing this?
Thanks a million in advance!
https://github.com/myell0w/MTStatusBarOverlay
MTStatusBarOverlay adds very subtle text to the phone's status bar. If you're looking for something a little more noticiable, try:
https://github.com/jdg/MBProgressHUD
As #kubi has pointed out, MTStatusBarOverlay is a good one, and I've passed Apple reviewer inspection with it. However I just found something that looks fraking awesome...
Tweetbot-Like Alert Panels (Blog), and the repository is MKInfoPanelDemo at Github.
Create a view that shows your message nicely, add it to the window, and start a UIView animation which makes it fade away. In the animation ended handler (delegate or block) remove the view.

Create springboard like main view

Is there some sample code, or an easy way, to implement an application with as its first view something like Springboard?
What I am looking for is just a view with basic icons which after a tab on an icon tells the view-controller to push the view associated with the selected icon.
This in itself is not that difficult off-course (just putting images on a view), but is there an easy way to implement all the extra functionality as well (as e.g. moving the icons around (start 'vibrating' when when you push hold them), multiple pages etc.). The Facebook App seems to have this. It is probably not worth my while to write it myself, but it would be nice if there is something 'out of the box' to give the App a bit more of an iPhone feel.
Thanks in advance!
Facebook uses the Three20 library for its UI. The specific view used for the SpringBoard-like interface is known as TTLauncherView.
This is not an endorsement (I have yet to really check this out, and I may be too entrenched in using Three20 at this point to even bother), but here is another project that implements the springboard functionality: myLauncher on Github
You can use UICollectionView to create this
Look at this example
https://github.com/tularovbeslan/Springboard

Is there an iPhone equivalent to the NSTokenField control?

In my app I want the user to type names into a UITextField (or equivalent) and then when they press return, it will put that word(s) in a blue bubble that's usually associated with tags. The cursor then moves to the end where they can add more "tags".
This can be seen when adding contacts in the To, CC & BCC fields in the Mail app, and also when selecting contacts in the Messages app.
How is this done? Is it something that's provided in the UIKit or available somewhere else?
Many thanks,
Michael
Venmo just open sourced their token field.
https://github.com/venmo/VENTokenField.git
edited:
The equivalent control in desktop Cocoa is an NSTokenField, but there doesn't seem to be an equivalent for Cocoa Touch.
Since iOS 13 there exists UISearchTextField.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uisearchtextfield
You can see that component in action in the Photos App.
That should fit for many use cases. By removing the leftView you can also get rid of the search icon.
But be aware: You can‘t mix text and tokens at various positions.
From the docs:
Tokens always occur contiguously before any text in the search field.
Adding this here for reference:
Feel free to check out TaggerKit (a library I made), it's more or less what OP was talking about. You can basically add tags functionality to your app by just adding a view and a couple of properties.
I dont think you can do it with any built in functionality in the SDK, never seen such a feature. What you could do however is implement it yourself, have some custom blue button with some text over it, and when the user hits return you can have some code that takes the text and returns you the button that you need, shouldnt be too bad to implement