More than 1 button on the left side of a NavigationBar - iphone

Is it possible?
I have a UINavigationBar that I'd like to have an 'edit' button next to the 'back' button. From what I've read you can only have one or the other, which makes no sense as they are separate properties of the navigationItem object(backBarButtonItem and leftBarButtonItem).
I'm assuming you have to somehow insert a custom UIView into the UINavigationBar. I'm looking into this option and if no better solution is given then I'll outline this method.

The short answer is:
Yes, you have to add your own UIButton views (or other UIControl subclasses) to the navigation controller, yourself. So, ignore the custom *ButtonItem properties and roll it yourself.
A little more involved answer is:
Apple makes it very easy to follow their HIG guidelines, but you're on your own if you want to break them or customize. In this case, only one button is allowed, because the actual hit region is bigger than the size of the displayed button--much easier to hit from a usability standpoint.
Extraneous:
btw, there is a subtle distinction between left/rightBarButtonItem and backBarButtonItem. left/right is specified on the current UIViewController. However back is specified by the previous UIViewController.

Using a custom view is indeed your only option here. The UINavigationBar is not terribly flexible. What you will need to do is create a UIView that contains UIButtons. Be sure you realize that if you use a custom view, you gain none of the automatic behaviors of the backBarButtonItem; you have to create your own IBActions, and the graphics for the buttons as well.
On a related note, I'm not sure this is the best idea. It's usually wise to stick to Apple's UI guidelines; is there no where else you can put the edit button? The right side of the bar, for example?

While #Kelvin's answer works for pre iOS 5, if you're using iOS 5+ there is now a leftBarButtonItems array property. Note that you also must set leftItemsSupplementBackButton to true.

Related

How to add more than eight buttons in a UIAlertView?

I want to add more than 8 buttons in UIAlertView but when I am adding buttons, they are covering each other and not scrolling. The title is also hiding.
How can I resolve this and add some scrolling in the alertview ??
Seems like this kind of question comes up at least once a day on StackOverflow, but if you want to mess around with the various components within a UIAlertView, the short answer is: DON'T.
If you look at Apple's documentation for UIAlertView, within the first screenful of text it states:
Subclassing Notes
The UIAlertView class is intended to be used as-is and does not
support subclassing. The view hierarchy for this class is private and
must not be modified.
This means that there's a decent chance that any mucking around within UIAlertView hierarchy could catastrophically break your app in future iOS release.
So if you want to add scroll bars or bells & whistles, you really should create your own custom UIView (which looks like a UIAlertView, but is wholly of your own creation)
If you have more buttons then UIActionSheet is the best option than using UIAlertView. If you dont want to use UIActionSheet there is always a custom View to your rescue!
You should really rethink your UI if you need more that 8 button in a UIAlertView. 8 button is the maximum the standard alert view can handle.
Either build your own alert view or use a normal view controller with a table view.
Not sure if it's necessary but as an alternative, you can present another ViewController/ModalVC that will have all the attributes that you may require....
Just move ahead with CustomView, Otherwise not possible with UIAlertView to meet up with your requirement :
Reference links :
http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.in/2010/05/custom-alert-views.html
http://iosdevtricks.blogspot.in/2013/04/creating-custom-alert-view-for-iphone.html
https://stackoverflow.com/a/6965828/434898
If you want to add many buttons you can use a custom implementation for the alertView.
A nice example is FUIAlertView
Or you could use WEpopover and add to it a table view.

How to make UITabBar invisible but still enabled?

The question in title is probably pretty dumb, but i just can't find answer. I need to have invisible UITabBar (without TabBarController) which interacts with user exactly as visible do. If i set its HIDDEN property to YES it becomes disabled even if i leave UserInteractionEnabled checked. Also (since i'm already asking a question) i would like to know what OPAQUE property do. I switch it but nothing seems to be changed and Apple's documentation is not quite understandable for me personally
Another approach to have an invisible UITabBar could be to have invisible UIButtons (use the custom type), and use them for your behaviour.
you can set the alpha value of your tabbar to 0 it will be transparent.

Tabbar App with Paging between tabs

I've been struggling for about four days now trying to figure out how to implement the functionality I need. Basically I want to make a tabbar app that you can swipe back and forth between the tabs. Say I have 4 tabs. Would it make any sense just to create a scrollview that's 4 times as wide as the device, and load up 4 individual views side by side? Then I could use the tabbar delegate to simple tell which page to make visible? I could also use itemSelected to update the tab itself if a user swipes to a new page.
does this make sense / is it a good idea? I just need a quick yes or no answer before I spend another whole day pursuing something doomed to failure. Thank you very much for your help...
A page control may help you. Or you can combine navigation controller with tab view. ie use navigate your page on tapping tab buttons.
Whether it's a good idea or not aside, one way you could achieve this is to register a UIGestureRecognizer on the UIViewController in each tab, that when a swipe is detected, changes the tab depending on the direction of the swipe.
My initial idea seemed to work. I made a UIScrollView with a contentsize width of the four views I needed. I turned paging on, and used the UITabBar delegate to switch the itemSelected when a new page comes up. When someone presses a tab, I use the delegate
-(void)tabBar:(UITabBar *)myTab didSelectItem:(UITabBarItem *)item { }
to change the contentOffset of my scrollview. This may not be the best solutions in many cases, however, my app is simple enough that it works quite splendidly for me.
The original question is, how do you enable side-swipe functionality in a tab-bar app implmented using the Storyboard feature.
This question remains unanswered in my opinion.
The way I see it, either the Storyboard tool addresses the problem domain fully, or else who needs it? If you're forced to do something ridiculous (no offense) like making a 4-page wide view to work around the lack of scrolling, then that it is an argument against the Storyboard. If you're forced to add code to do something that is in the middle of the Storyboard target feature set, then it's going to be confusing to anyone who comes to the project later - some things are done via Storyboard, some are done in seemingly unrelated code.
Storyboard is a great visual development idea, but it needs to have its capability heaving ramped up and soon. There is only one answer really to this question; it should be, just add another behavior element. The fact that that is not working is a bug or a defect.

iPhone application - pop up dialogue - sort of

I have an iPhone application which is, in essence, a list. There is a UINavigationBar at the top, and then there is a UITableView which holds the list. I'd like to have an option in some way or another of allowing the user to sort the list in different ways. So, in my mind, I picture having a NavigationItem on the UINavigationBar that, when touched, a little pop up dialogue comes up. You select the "sort" you want, a check mark appears next to it, and the dialogue goes away.
I'm not really sure how to do this. I tried creating a UIView, adding a UIViewController onto it (which held this list of different "sort" parameters (ex. sort alphabetically, sort by date, etc) in a UITableView. But the UITableView isn't responding to any touches, and I'm not sure why.
Does anyone have an idea for using Apples wonderful interface for having an option like this? I can't use a UISegmentedControl below the UINavigationBar, because there are 5 possible options, and I can't fit all that in a single UISegmentedControl.
This sounds like a job for the UIPickerView. You could just slide one up from the bottom of the view whenever that button is pressed. I've done this in the past and it works well.
You won't get a checkmark, but if you want a pop-up I suggest using a UIAlertView.
Have you looked into UIActionSheet at all? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiactionsheet
It seems like it might be a good fit for this approach. The action sheet will be a bit tall since you will have 5-6 buttons in it, but it should get the job done and they are really easy to implement.
The way you are approaching it with displaying another view with its own UITableView in it would work also, but it doesn't seem like the best approach to me. Granted, if you are set on going with that approach, provide us with some code so we can try to figure out why the UITableView isn't responding to touches.

Subclassing UINavigationBar in Xcode

I want to apply a custom alpha value to the title of the UINavigationBar. The UINavigationBar is part of the UINavigationController and the UINavigationController is part of a UITabBarController.
Edit: Here is a picture of what I created using a UIToolbar and a UILabel. I want to do the same using the title in the UINavigationController: http://i.stack.imgur.com/B8YX0.png
I think the only way to accomplish this would be to subclass the UINavigationBar and override a method that allows me to set the Alpha when it's drawn.
Here are my questions:
Is this the correct way to do this?
What are the HIG ramifications of this?
I am new to subclassing in Objective-C, can you provide a guide or
tutorial that will help me grasp the steps required in subclassing a
UI Element and implementing a change?
When I get the subclass configured, I can view it in IB by changing
the class of the UINavigationBar to my custom class, correct?
Are there any "gotchas" that can come up with sublassing that an
expert like yourself can give me a head's up on?
This is something you shouldn't do. Why would you want to change that color but not the overall opacity of the bar? it decreases readability. There are multiple problems:
there is no public API, so it's not trivial
tampering with the subviews is fragile, may break and may have side-effects
it's not foreseen to be done -- the alpha value of the view is used and animated when pushing/popping a controller
If you really want to do it, there's only one clean, public way: Give each navigation item to be pushed a custom title view. You can tamper with that one as much as you want. So it's possible to set a view with a UILabel as subview and having it's alpha set to 0.5.
When a navigation bar is being managed by a navigation controller, there are only a few properties you're allowed to change (see docs). One of them is translucent which adjusts the alpha, but only to an Apple-determined value.