Custom Keyboard on iPhone - iphone

What's the easiest way to implement a custom keyboard on the iPhone? I basically want an action sheet that keeps part of my interface visible, but I want to load my own view into it, preferably via nib. I've been looking into modal views, but I'm getting the feeling I'm going in the wrong direction.

Just create a view, add it to your window, and resize the rest of the views in the window to accommodate.

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.

Present a UITableView as drop-down list using the iOS SDK

I want to implement a drop-down list in an iPhone application, the same like you might have seen in iBooks when you select PDFs/Books.
I have a slight idea how to implement it, just correct me if I am wrong:
Create the button
On a click event of the button define a CGRect and within the CGRect draw a LoadTableView
Load TableViewData at runtime.
Is that correct? If not, how should I do it?
Here's a much better/easier way to do it.
Create custom UITableViewController and associated nib. Use this class to encapsulate your tableView and data.
When the user clicks on your button, instantiate your custom view controller and display it modally using presentModalViewController:animated
When the user has selected an option from your popup view, call back to the parent view with the results.
Dismiss your table view with dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:
This is what iBooks does with a highly customized UITableViewController.
Are you looking for a UIPickerView?
This component gives you the possibility of selecting from a custom number of elements through a dedicate table view. Use it in conjunction with a UIActionSheet to get the best results.

iPhone, how what I show smaller views ontop of normal view and switch between my current normal views?

I'd like to display some small tutorial dialogs on top of my exiting views. I want to be able to see my existing views behind these smaller views.
Do I have to use view controllers in the same I way I would me normal views, and presentmodalviewcontroller etc ?
I haven't tried making a smaller view in interface builder before.
Also, say I want to move to another one of my existing views, full screen, while in my tutorial view. How would I close my tutorial view move to the next full screen view and launch another tutorial view ?
Example code or pseudo code would be welcome.
If your tutorial dialogs are just text, you could use UIAlertView to show the information to the user, so they can just read it and click the OK button when they're done. It's a very easy way to show some text to the user.
If you need to include images or other interactive items in your tutorial dialogs, the easiest way might be for you to just have your fullscreen view's view controller create a new view and put it up. So in this case, you'd create your view in Interface Builder, and when you want to show it, instantiate it using -[UIBundle loadNibNamed:owner:options:] and add it as a subview of your main view. Of course, it may even be easier to create the tutorial view programmatically from your view controller rather than using a nib for them at all.
Regarding the question of moving on to another fullscreen view, you would probably want to look into embedding your view controllers in a UINavigationController. This would allow you to push from the first controller to the second very easily, and the user would be able to just tap the Back button to get back to the first. If you're not looking for a navigation bar type of interface, you could present the second view controller as a modal view controller by calling -[UIViewController presentModalViewController:animated:] on your main view controller. This will pop up the second view controller fullscreen, and the user can dismiss it when they're done. Check out Apple's great documentation on UINavigationController to get a feel for how to use that:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/ViewControllerPGforiPhoneOS/NavigationControllers/NavigationControllers.html%23//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007457-CH103-SW1
I would think that you could use existing UIViewController and simply add a new UIView that is of desired dimensions, that sits in front of other views and which is non-opaque and has alpha less than 1.
If you want a general purpose tutorial mechanism that can be placed atop any one of many UIViewControllers, then you would want to extract the navigation logic, etc.
Sorry, no code - just a few quick thoughts.

Wizard view for iPhone application

I want to implement a wizard view that have to apply the following requirements:
several steps (configurable)
each step has to be a stand-alone UIView
back, previous, finish buttons
indicator that must show on each step we are
It must not be some navigation-style implementation (using UINavigationController) just view which I can place somewhere on the another UIView.
Any suggestions & best practices how to implement this task?
Sounds like you want a modal view. You should just configure a view as you like and display it modally from the view controller. It will then appear above the other views and trap all touches. If you need to create the illusion of various "pages" you would need to programmatically add buttons, text fields etc and then remove them as needed.
However, you might want to rethink this design. It's all good and well to have a wizard in a dialog view on a non-mobile screen with plenty of visual real estate but you really don't have that much space on a mobile screen. If you leave the backing view visible this will rob the wizard view of most of its area. If you expand the wizard view to a useful size, you might as well use a full screen view anyway.

Need help designing application with UIPageControl and UIScrollView

I have looked at the PageControl example from Apple and have an architectural requirement difference. In the example the scroll view and page control objects are at the app delegate level. This means the scroll view and page control appears on every view of the application.
However, I have a "settings" view toggled from an info button (for now) that should not have these controls displayed. Therefore, I need to move my scroll view, page control, and view controllers objects down a layer and I'm struggling with how to best do this.
For example, the primary application view consists of metals (periodic elements). From this view I need a scroll view, page control, and info button on every view descending from here. Each metal will have it's own subclass where different images, calculations, etc will be displayed but I believe I need each of these subclassed elements to share the same scroll view, page control, and viewControllers array, right? Do I need a singleton?
What you are describing is kind of like how the native Weather application works. Each time you swipe, the info light is rendered as part of the page you are viewing. However, no matter what info light you tap, when it flips over you still get the same settings. Obviously this is how Apple thinks the UI should work because they did it that way. There is no reason you can't do the same.
In this situation, you don't need to create a singleton, you can use [UIApplication sharedApplication] as your singleton to get to your custom application delegate via the delegate property.
Look at Crème where I do exactly what you describe. The main view is scrollview+pagecontrol. Upon triggering the app into settings mode, the settings panel comes up that does not have a page control.
The solution is simply that you have a simple top-level UIViewController, and you make both the scrollview and pageview children of that viewcontroller. And for settings, you animate the modal settings dialog with a flip animation into the top-level UIViewController.