Is it possible to change the default text (something like "looking for other iPhones and iPod touches") in the GameKit's GKPeerPickerController?
I've seen solutions that are completely custom but I was wondering if i can avoid that hassle and just change the default text.
You could mess with the GKPeerPickerController's view hierarchy which could break with future OS versions.
If you're looking to build your own controller to let the user connect to another device, just forget about using the picker controller and use a simple GKSession instance yourself. Have a look at Beam It!, it's open source (just scroll down a bit).
Related
Is there a way to make my app override the current font of the currently foreground application?
What I have in mind is no matter which app is on foreground my app to be able to attach a button to the keyboard which will switch the font to a custom one thus overriding the current font for all ui elements(labels, buttons, text fields etc.).
What you're looking for is not allowed by Apple.
It seems it can be done for jailbroken devices though. It's difficult to tell how exactly they're doing it but I guess they meddled around with the images/colors provided by Apple for the keyboard and replaced them with their custom ones leaving the default un-recoverable.
Here's a blog about it too.
You can create a category on UIFont and replace systemFontWithName:size: and boldSystemFontWithName:size: with your own font. But this may have some weird side effects, as even alertViews and actionSheets are customized with that method..
edit: of course this works only in your own app.. you cannot change anything outside of your app.
iOS has a default UIButton highlighting mechanism that really cuts down the preliminary design work needed to come up with a prototype. Does Flash have something similar?
Note that I'm not asking this for use on iOS, the question is for Flash apps that are going to be run on the web
Is not possible in flash by default. If you want to create a highlighted effect SimpleButton or MovieClip, you must create effect. using a MotionScript or Actionscripts effects must be implemented.
I can't see how this is possible from the documentation but here nike is doing it in their app so there must be a way.
It's impossible unfortunately. Apple developed it for Nike, so they used tricks of their own to do it. It might actually be possible, but it's certainly undocumented if possible. Impossible for an App Store app. Let us know if you figure out a way to do it even if it's undocumented.
If you use the library InAppSettingsKit, you can have a setting that uses a custom subview (a custom UIViewController) to display the choice to the user. So all you have to do is to create a custom view controller that looks just the one in your picture (it's basically just a UITableView and a UIPickerView).
In the example app that comes along with InAppSettingsKit, there is an example on how to use a custom subview.
This is Cocoa Touch (et al), iPhone, XCode only.
After completing my first commercial iPhone app, I'm struggling a bit to find a way to start and expand an app from scratch which gives the most linear development (i.e., the least scrapping, re-write or re-organization of code, classes and resources) as app specs change and I learn more (mostly about what Cocoa Touch and other classes and components are designed to be capable of and the limitation of their customization).
So. File, New Project. Blank window based app? Create the controllers I need, with .xib if necessary, so I can localize them and do changes requested by the customer in IB? And then always subclass each class except those extremely unlikely to be customized? (I mean framework classes such as UIButton, CLLocation etc here.)
The question is a generic 'approach' type question, so I'll be happy to listen to handy dev practices you've found paid off. Do you have any tips for which 're-usable components' you've found have become very useful in subsequent projects?
Clients often describe programs in terms of 'first, this screen appears, and then you can click this button and on the new screen you can select... (and so on)' terms. Are there any good guides to go from there to vital early-stage app construction choices, i.e. 'functions-features-visuals description to open-ended-app-architecture'?
For example, in my app I went from NavBar, to Toolbar with items, to Toolbar with two custom subviews in order to accommodate the functions-features-visuals description. Maybe you have also done such a thing and have some advice to offer?
I'm also looking for open-ended approaches to sharing large ("loaded data") objects, or even simple booleans, between controllers and invoking methods in another controller, specifically starting processes such as animation and loading (example: trigger a load from a URL in the second tab viewcontroller after making sure an animation has been started in the first tab viewcontroller), as these two features apply to the app architecture building approach you advocate.
Any handy pointers appreciated. Thanks guys.
Closing this up as there's no single correct answer and was more suitable for the other forum, had I known it existed when I asked :)
If you want to know the method I ended up with, it's basically this:
Window-based blank app
Navigation Controller controls all, whether I need to or not (hide when not used)
Tab Bar Controller if necessary
Connect everything <-- unhelpful, I know.
Set up and check autorotation, it might get added to some view later.
Add one viewcontroller with xib for each view, you never know when they want an extra button somewhere. It's easier to copy code than make the max ultra superdynamic adjustable tableviewcontroller that does all list-navigation, etc.
Re-use a viewcontroller only when just the content differs in it, such as a detail viewcontroller.
Minimize code in each viewcontroller by writing functions and methods and shove them in a shared .m
Everything that's shared ends up in the App delegate, except subclassed stuff.
Modal viewcontrollers are always dynamically created and never have an xib.
my app asks the user yes-no questions, user replies using a uiswitch on screen. i've been thinking about creating a custom version of the switch that would display yes/no instead of on/off and would use a green/red background as an indicator of the value. after creating a mock up i'm not so sure this is the way to go. using the default switch doesn't feel right but so does changing it too much. what do you think?
It really depends; some custom applications have extremely custom UIs (such as ConvertBot, for example) and it works great for them. The risk is sometimes worth the effort. In other scenarios, custom widgets result in breaking usability. I don't think that changing 'ON/OFF' to 'YES/NO' is groundbreaking, if you do it right you can pull it off no problem.
I think if your mockup was better done (the slider should be divided into two to have YES AND NO of equal length with equal padding on both sides) it would look a little better.
From a user interface perspective, this is a bad idea. People have already learned the default switch, so why change it now?
Additionally, you run the risk of adding another source of bugs to your application that was not present before.
Depending on the app, this can be very valid. Sure people are used to the default controls, but changing the text or colors is not going to break the user's understanding of these controls. Its still the same switch underneath.
In your example you color both the Yes/No. That is the only concern I would have that you did change how the core switch works. Typically, it works with a highlighted color and a grey color. So, having it stay colored on both options could potentially be confusing.
Regardless, if you want to build your app this way, you should. Just because the iPhone offers great default controls doesn't mean developers shouldn't innovate and add their own or take the default controls to the next level.
Take a look at the custom UISwitch control that I built to allow me to change the background color of the control. You could use the same method to change the text, the font, or the text color very easily.
http://www.homick.com/posts/custom-uiswitch-control
The code is available on Github and includes a PSD that is used to build three different png files that the control uses. You can modify the contents of the psd to recreate the png files in whatever format you like. Swap those into the control and away you go.