I am wondering how to achieve selection menu like tap tap revenge 3 have.Do I need to make a whole custom class or any help which class should I drive my subclass.I tried to modify UIPickerView but I cant change background image and frame(both is private).
Thanks
Mrigank Gupta
Here is the link of image(not having reputation to post image)
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/345aed3aee.jpg
Making a custom control class will be easier than trying to shoehorn one of the existing ones.
Tapbots put together a little article on their work.
http://tapbots.com/blog/design/designing-convertbot
You should be able to use a few images, a button, graphics transforms and touch event handling to pull it off.
Related
I am building an iPhone app for a library and I want to give few options to the user to search books by. A user can search a book by title, author, topics, or date of publication.
What I want to know what's the best way to display these search options to the user? In terms of HTML, it would be easy - either use a drop down list or radio buttons. I tried using UIPickerView but honestly, that looks terribly ugly and destroys the aesthetics of the view of my app.
The other option I was thnking was using segmented control, but is it possible to have a vertical segment control in stead of horizontal one? The selection texts can be too long.
Any ideas?
If you want a vertical segmented control, you'll have to make it yourself. Create a textured image with dividers. I would export each section as a PNG separately. Then create a picture of each section with the "pressed down" gradient and export each segment as a separate PNG again.
I would then make a new class. If there is a specific number of objects in your segmented control or this is a one time thing, the class may not even be necessary. If not, then in the class constructor pass an array with the titles of the segments in your segmented control. For the first and last objects, use the pictures you made with rounded corners. For the objects in between, use the standard pictures. Then put the titles on top. When a segment is tapped (perhaps use hidden UIButtons), you can use a delegate method to tell the main search class which one was tapped, and then the class can replace the normal picture of that segment with the pressed down one.
Thanks for the options.
I ended up creating a simple table to show my choices.
User clicks on "search by", which opens up the table with options and then when you select any option, you return back to main view with the chosen search option.
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.
What I'm trying to do is replicate the NSTokenField like UITextField seen in the Mail app and Messages app (type a contact and it comes up with suggestions).
I've got the autocompleting working perfectly, when you type in a UITextField, a UITableView pops up showing any matches that it can find in an array, when you click one it adds it to the UITextField. I'm really happy with this so far.
The problem I've run into now is making the controls look like those in the native apps. Afterall, design is everything!
My first question is how can I add that shadow look to the UITableView? Looks like it's sunk down behind the UITextField.
Secondly, I know I'm going to have to subclass the UITextField to make it look the way I'd like it to, but I've got no idea where to start with that. Some pointers or a sample would be great!
Lastly, I think I need to create a custom UIButton with space for text and the blue gradient then add it to the UITextField. Same problem as with the UITextField, not really sure how to subclass the UIButton (what methods it needs to draw and stuff) or how to add it to the UITextField in such a way that when you click backspace on in the UITextField, the button will be highlighted, then deleted if backspace is clicked again (exactly how the NSTokenField works).
I've included an image just so you can see what I'm talking about:
http://www.thermoglobalnuclearwar.com/stuff/mail.jpg
I have taken a look at Joe Hewitts Three20 project but I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
I'd like to start very simply and understand everything that's going on rather than just dragging his code into mine and not having any idea what's going on!
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Tom.
Have you considered using the Three20 library? It contains a control which I think does what you want (TTPickerTextView).
As the website description states
TTPickerTextField is a type-ahead UITextField. As you type it searches a data source, and it
adds bubbles into the flow of text when you choose a type-ahead option. I use this in
TTMessageController for selecting the names of message recipients.
At a minimum the source code might give you some pointers on how to achieve the various visual effects.
Okay, I've got the shadow working underneath the UITextField, and I've added the "To:" label to it. It looks great!
So the final thing is the blue NSToken like control. I've started to think the easiest thing is just to subclass a UIView and draw the blue gradient and label inside it. Which brings me to some more questions:
I found this: http://github.com/leonho/iphone-libs/tree/master which draws a nice rounded view and I've adapted it to add some text to it rather than a number, what I don't know how to do is draw a gradient instead of a solid block of colour.
After that there's just the matter of adding the rounded views to the UITextField, moving the cursor and working out how to delete the views when the cursor reaches them, but I'll tackle that when I need to.
I would like to arrange UIControls in WPF in a similar way to the applications on the iPhone. They should be positioned on a grid, but a user should be able to drag them somewhere else, after releasing the mouse button (or the finger in case of an iPhone) the selected UIControl should snap back to the next position in the grid. The other UIElements should be rearranged automatically.
Further the user should also be connect two elements with a line or something.
I'm not experienced with WPF. The first question is if there is a container which is suitable for something (System.Windows.Controls.Grid ?) or if I have to extend canvas or somethig else for this.
I would like to know which elements from the WPF framework can be used and which elements I have to write myself.
For people who do not own an iPhone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3omhu2AUWC8
Update
I've looked at AnimatedTilePanel in the BangOTricks examples (see below), this one explains how to create your own Panel and how to let it arrange things there.. However I still need an idea how to implement drag and drop correctly in this example..
Unfortunately, you'll have to write a lot of things yourself, as WPF doesn't automatically do what you're looking for.
For positioning the controls, you can use either UniformGrid or Grid. Assuming it's much like the iPhone video you showed, you can just use the UniformGrid with 4 columns and however many rows you need.
For the dragging animation, layout-wise, you could start by manipulating the RenderTransform property on whatever is being dragged, but you'll have to set a handler to check once you've met whatever threshold necessary to move into the another "cell" -- and at that point, you'll have to changed the order of the items in the tree.
Take a look at AnimatedTilePanel from Kevin's Bag-o-Tricks at:
http://j832.com/bagotricks/
It doesn't do everything you want but it will show you how to write a panel that animates its children when changing size or order.
New input to this old post in 09. Earlier this year (2012) someone has wrote a FluidWrapPanel and open sourced it. I tried it and it works like a charm - just like that on the iPhone menu.
You can also apply to other UI Elements or UserControl.
Does anyone have any examples or resources where i might find information on scrolling text which is too long to display in a button control? I'm thinking something along these lines.
Display as much text will fit within the current rect with a '...' at the end to signify overflow.
Pause for say 1 second then slowly scroll the text to the right edge displaying the right part of the string.
Display as much text will fit within the current rect with a '...' at the beginning to signify overflow.
Start the whole thing over in reverse.
Is there an easy way to do this using the "core" or built in "animation" frameworks on a certain mobile device?
[edit]
Iwanted to add some more details as i think people are more focused on wether or not what i'm trying to accomplish is appropriate. The button is for the answers on a trivia game. It does not perform any speciffic UI function but is for displaying the answer. Apple themselves is doing this in their iQuiz trivia game on the iPod Nano and i think its a pretty elegant solution to answers that are longer than the width of my button.
In case its the '...' that is the difficult part of this. Lets say i removed this requirement. Could i have the label for the button be full sized but clipped to the client rect of the button and use some animation methods to scroll it within the clipping rect? This would give me almost the same effect minus the ellipses.
Here's an idea: instead of ellipses (...), use a gradient on each side, so the extra text fades away into the background color. Then you could do this with three CALayers: one for the text and two for fade effect.
The fade masks would just be rectangles with a gradient that goes from transparent to the background color. They should be positioned above the text layer. The text would be drawn on the text layer, and then you just animate it sliding back and forth in the manner you describe. You can create a CGPath object describing the path and add it to a CAKeyframeAnimation object which you add to the text layer.
As for whether you think this is "easy" depends on how well you know Core Animation, but I think once you learn the API you'll find this isn't too bad and would be worth the trouble.
Without wishing to be obtuse, maybe you should rethink your problem. A button should have a clear and predictable function. It's not a place to store and display text. Perhaps you could have a description show on screen with a nice standard button below?
Update with source code example:
Here is some ready to use source code example (actually a full zipped Xcode project with image and nib files and some source code), not for the iPhone, not using Core Animation, just using a couple of simple NSImages and a NSImageView. It is just a cheap hack, it does not implement the full functionality you requested (sorry, but I don't feel like writing your source code for you :-P), horrible code layout (hey, I just hacked this together within a couple of minutes, so you can't expect any better ;-)) and it's just a demonstration how this can be done. It can be done with Core Animation, too, but this approach is simpler. Composing the button animation into a NSImageView is not as nice as subclassing a NSView and directly paint to its context, but it's much simpler (I just wanted to hack together the simplest solution possible). It will also not scroll back once it scrolled all the way to the right. Therefor you just need another method to scroll back and start another NSTimer that fires 2 seconds after you drew the dots to the left.
Just open the project in Xcode and hit run, that's all there is to do. Then have a look at the source code. It's really not that complicated (however, you may have to reformat it first, the layout sucks).
Update because of comment to my answer:
If you don't use Apple UI elements at all, I fail to see the problem. In that case your button is not even a button, it's just a clickable View (NSView if you use Cocoa). You can just sub-class NSView as MyAnswerView and overwrite the paint method to paint into the view whatever you wish. Multiline text, scrolling text, 3D text animated, it's completely up to your imagination.
Here's an example, showing how someone subclassed NSView to create a complete custom control that does not exist by default. The control looks like this:
See the funny thing in the upper left corner? That is a control. Here's how it works:
I hate to say that, as it is no answer to your question, but "Don't do that!". Apple has guidelines how to implement a user interface. While you are free to ignore them, Apple users are used to have UIs following these guidelines and not following them will create applications that Apple users find ugly and little appealing.
Here are Apple's Human Interface Guidelines
Let me quote from there
Push Button Contents and Labeling
A push button always contains text, it
does not contain an image. If you need
to display an icon or other image on a
button, use instead a bevel button,
described in “Bevel Buttons.”
The label on a push button should be a
verb or verb phrase that describes the
action it performs—Save, Close, Print,
Delete, Change Password, and so on. If
a push button acts on a single
setting, label the button as
specifically as possible; “Choose
Picture…,” for example, is more
helpful than “Choose…” Because buttons
initiate an immediate action, it
shouldn’t be necessary to use “now”
(Scan Now, for example) in the label.
Push button labels should have
title-style capitalization, as
described in “Capitalization of
Interface Element Labels and Text.” If
the push button immediately opens
another window, dialog, or application
to perform its action, you can use an
ellipsis in the label. For example,
Mail preferences displays a push
button that includes an ellipsis
because it opens .Mac system
preferences, as shown in Figure 15-8.
Buttons should contain a single verb or a verb phrase, not answers to trivia game! If you have between 2 and 5 answers, you should use Radio Buttons to have the user select the answer and an OK button to have the user accept the answer. For more than 5 answers, you should consider a Pop-up Selector instead according to guidelines, though I guess that would be rather ugly in this case.
You could consider using a table with just one column, one row per answer and each cell being multiline if the answer is very long and needs to break. So the user selects a table row by clicking on it, which highlights the table cell and then clicks on an OK button to finish. Alternatively, you can directly continue, as soon as the user selects any table cell (but that way you take the user any chance to correct an accidental click). On the other hand, tables with multiline cells are rather rare on MacOS X. The iPhone uses some, but usually with very little text (at most two lines).
Pretty sure you can't do that using the standard API, certainly not with UILineBreakMode. In addition, the style guide says that an ellipsis indicates that the button when pressed will ask you for more information -for example Open File... will ask for the name of a file. Your proposed use of ellipsis violates this guideline.
You'd need some custom logic to implement the behaviour you describe, but I don't think it's the way to go anyway.
This is not a very good UI practice, but if you still want to do it, your best bet is to do so via a clickable div styled to look like a button.
Set the width of the div to an explicit value, and its overflow to hidden, then use a script executing on an interval to adjust the scrollLeft property of this div.