iOS 7 Back Button Arrow Vertical Alignment - uibarbuttonitem

On iOS 7, is there any way to change the back button arrow's vertical alignment? I can only change the vertical alignment of the title and nothing in UIBarButtonItem's appearance suggest that the arrow vertical alignment can be changed.
See the following example:

I think the best way to reach your goal is setting the UINavigationBars backIndicatorImageto an arrow-image with space around it. You can mask your image, so the text is able to flow into parts of the image.
UINavigationBar *navigationBar = ...;
navigationBar.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:#"Activity" style:UIBarButtonItemStylePlain target:nil action:nil];
navigationBar.backIndicatorImage = [UIImage imageNamed:#"arrow-image"];
navigationBar.backIndicatorTransitionMaskImage = [UIImage imageNamed:#"arrow-image-mask"];
AppCoda wrote a great article about customizing the UINavigationBarin iOS7. It's worth reading:
http://www.appcoda.com/customize-navigation-status-bar-ios-7/
As the docs say you have to set BOTH properties to get this up and running: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/uikit/reference/uinavigationbar_class/Reference/UINavigationBar.html#//apple_ref/occ/instp/UINavigationBar/backIndicatorImage

Related

How do I change the text color of the button returned by displayModeButtonItem in iOS 8?

In iOS8 I am using a splitViewController to present my data. I have a custom color for the navigation bar (light blue) and I set the color for the title to white. I would like to change the color of the text in the displayModeButtonItem to white as well, but no matter what I do, it stays the default blue when displayed on the iPhone. When displayed on the iPad it is white.
I have tried
self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem = [self.splitViewController displayModeButtonItem];
self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem.tintColor = [UIColor whiteColor];
but that does nothing. It seems that since this button is handled automatically by iOS, nothing I do can change it. Is there somewhere that I can intercept this button and set its color?
This is tricky to find. In Interface Builder, you need to:
Find the Navigation controller for the Master View Controller.
Select the Navigation Bar
Change the Tint
Objective c
In SceneDelegate.m
- (void)scene:(UIScene *)scene willConnectToSession:(UISceneSession *)session options:(UISceneConnectionOptions *)connectionOptions {
UISplitViewController *splitViewController = (UISplitViewController *)self.window.rootViewController;
splitViewController.view.tintColor = [UIColor blackColor];
}
If you can't use the accepted answer, because you don't have a Navigation Controller in your Master View (as I didn't have), you can try the following:
[[UINavigationBar appearance] setTintColor:[UIColor whiteColor]];
If you put this in the App Delegate it will make every UIBarButtonItem white (including the displayModeButtonItem), but you could target it more specific to the SplitViewController's displayModeButtonItem.

Trouble matching the vibrant background of a Yosemite NSMenuItem containing a custom view

I am attempting to add a custom view to an NSMenuItem in the OS X 10.10 Yosemite menu bar.
The custom view is simply an NSView background with an NSTextField “label”.
The problem is that the background NSView is given Yosemite-style vibrancy/transparency when added to the menu. The NSTextfield label is not.
Through the use of NSRectFillUsingOperation I've gotten this to look good for some background colors in Yosemite. But others continue to not match. When it is working, after manually "highlighting" the view, the original colors change and no longer match. I can dig up some example code for this if needed.
Then, when it is looking somewhat good in Yosemite, it looks terrible in 10.9 Mavericks.
I've also tried setting the wantsLayer property to YES to turn the view into a CALayer-backed view. This creates other issues such as text not anti-aliasing correctly against a clear background.
My Question:
How do I display a label on top of a NSMenuItem custom view? The label's background must exactly match the view's background. Solution must work in Yosemite and Mavericks.
Example code below:
self.statusItem = [[NSStatusBar systemStatusBar]
statusItemWithLength:NSVariableStatusItemLength];
[self.statusItem setTitle:#"TEST"];
[self.statusItem setHighlightMode:YES];
[self.statusItem setEnabled:YES];
[self.statusItem setTarget:self];
NSMenu *menu = [[NSMenu alloc] init];
[menu addItemWithTitle:#"Disabled menu item" action:nil keyEquivalent:#""];
[menu addItemWithTitle:#"Enabled menu item" action:#selector(enabled) keyEquivalent:#""];
NSTextField *label = [[NSTextField alloc] initWithFrame:NSMakeRect(30, 20, 50, 20)];
label.stringValue = #"label";
label.editable = NO;
label.bordered = NO;
label.backgroundColor = [NSColor blueColor];
//label.backgroundColor = [NSColor clearColor];
PKMenuItemView *view = [[PKMenuItemView alloc] initWithFrame:NSMakeRect(0, 0, 200, 50)];
[view addSubview:label];
NSMenuItem *viewMenuItem = [[NSMenuItem alloc] init];
[viewMenuItem setView:view];
[menu addItem:viewMenuItem];
self.statusItem.menu = menu;
I've subclassed the NSView to override drawRect: and draw a colored background:
- (void)drawRect:(NSRect)dirtyRect {
[super drawRect:dirtyRect];
[[NSColor blueColor] setFill];
NSRectFill(dirtyRect);
//NSRectFillUsingOperation(dirtyRect, NSCompositeSourceOver);
}
It is surely kinda hack, but it worked for me.
Try adding an NSImageView with empty image to your custom view. Image view must be occupy the whole view.
I think I have less "hackish" solution. It's indeed caused by the new NSVisualEffectView and Vibrancy stuff in Yosemite. I learned that there are quite complex rules how views are drawn when they're subviews of NSVisualEffectView. It was discussed on WWDC 2014 in session 220 - Adopting Advanced Features of the New UI of OS X Yosemite. I recommend you to watch this session video to get comprehensive explanation.
Shortly, it seems that your problem may be caused by colors you use. There are two new system colors - [NSColor labelColor] and [NSColor secondaryLabelColor]. These two are automatically adjusted when drawn inside NSVisualEffectView. Also, your custom view should support Vibrancy effect. This is done by overriding - (BOOL)allowsVibrancy method and returning YES.
Please check the session video mentioned above or download session slides in PDF to get precise information. This stuff is discussed from slide 124 in PDF and near the middle of the video.
Unfortunately there are currently several problems in Yosemite. As Matthes already mentioned, you can use labelColor() and secondaryLabelColor(). Using those colors do not cause the label to draw the strange background you are seeing.
However, labelColor() only works fine for VibrantDark because there the label color is white when a NSMenuItem is both highlighted and when not highlighted. With VibrantLight the labelColor is black and is therefore very difficult to read on on top of the blue highlight.
For the highlight color of the custom view of your NSMenuItem one might think that you should use selectedMenuItemColor() given its name. The problem with this is that the color doesn't actually match the menu highlight color that you see in NSMenuItems without a custom view. The color is completely wrong for both VibrantLight and VibrantDark.
Tl;dr: So how can you create a custom NSMenuItem that uses the exact same text color and highlight color? You can't. You should use labelColor() and selectedMenuItemColor() but the former only works correctly for VibrantDark, and the latter doesn't match at all.
I really hope I am wrong because I am trying to achieve the same thing :(
Edit: Here is an example project if people want to have a look.
Response from a Apple Developer Technical Support ticket I opened in 2015:
Re: DTS Auto-Ack - Vibrant background and highlighting of Custom View NSMenuItems
This is a difficult problem to tackle, especially in light of the fact that menu selection drawing was not intended for menu items with custom views, and menu selection drawing (colors, etc.) may change in the future. This is why we ask you to file bug reports so that menu selection will be honored with custom views, if asked for, so that future changes to OS X won’t require developers to continually maintain their code to match future color appearances.
The “Application Menu and Pop-up List Programming Topics” says this:
Views in Menu Items -
“A menu item with a view does not draw its title, state, font, or other standard drawing attributes, and assigns drawing responsibility entirely to the view. Keyboard equivalents and type-select continue to use the key equivalent and title as normal.”
Since all drawing is up to the developer, custom views in menu items aren’t necessarily supposed to draw “selected”.
The APIs to obtain the right selection color is obviously not doing what it’s supposed to, hence the request to file a bug report. I wish we could offer more concrete solutions to the problem but a workaround offered today may not hold up tomorrow and we don’t want to set a bad precedent on workarounds that are risky. Apple apps have access to lower level private APIs that achieve their results. We cannot offer you these solutions as they are private.
If selectedMenuItemColor() does not match the menu highlight color with Vibrant light and dark, that’s a bug to be filed and to be fixed.
Lastly, Apple recommends to use NSMenuItem’s APIs as much as possible to achieve what you want in menus. The screenshots you included can likely be done without applying custom views.
I've just discovered that +[NSColor keyboardFocusIndicatorColor] is the right color (on El Capitan at least), whereas the expected selectedMenuItemColor is by far too dark.
Per AppKit engineers at WWDC, this doesn't really work with NSMenuItem. I added that answer to this question as well.
They suggested to instead use an NSPopover to create a faux-NSMenu attached to an NSStatusItem menu bar helper.
Using code similar to the below results in vibrant background selection:
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
let visualEffectView = NSVisualEffectView()
visualEffectView.material = .selection
// .menu or .popover for the non-selected background.
visualEffectView.state = .active
visualEffectView.blendingMode = .behindWindow
visualEffectView.isEmphasized = true
let label = NSTextField(labelWithString: "Hello, world!")
label.cell?.backgroundStyle = .emphasized
visualEffectView.addSubview(label)
visualEffectView.frame = view.bounds
label.setFrameOrigin(.zero)
view.addSubview(visualEffectView)
}
At the WWDC 2019 AppKit Lab I worked through this issue with engineers from the AppKit team.
They were surprised that it did not work by default, and encouraged me to file (more) radars:
FB6143574 - Expose private API for NSMenuItem _viewHandlesEvents
They were aware of a private API _viewHandlesEvents on NSMenuItem.
// VibrantMenuBar-Bridging-Header.h
#import <AppKit/AppKit.h>
#interface NSMenuItem ()
#property (setter=_setViewHandlesEvents:) BOOL _viewHandlesEvents;
#end
Set viewHandlesEvents to false and the background of the custom view in the NSMenuItem will be selected and appear (somewhat) as expected.
There are still issues with how labels and other subviews react to the selection. Text View text is not properly changing color.
let menuItem = NSMenuItem(title: "", action: nil, keyEquivalent: "")
menuItem.view = label
menuItem._viewHandlesEvents = false
There are some other references to _viewHandlesEvents on the internet:
How to flash a custom NSMenuItem view after selection?

Selectable area for NSButton

So I am basically trying to make a list of selectable text items (just a list of text, no button bezels, backgrounds, etc.). I suppose that I could make this happen with an NSTableview, but trying to make the table view completely transparent and still functional was giving me some issues. Anwyays, I am trying to do it with NSButtons that I create programatically and add to my view in a list, without any background or bezel. However, when I set the properties to make the button transparent and without bezel, the clickable area of the button is relegated to the text of the title of the button alone. Clicking anywhere else that the button should be (around the title) no longer works. Here is the code I am using. I want to be able to click anywhere in the rect in which I create the button in order to cause a click. FYI I have tried NSSwitchButton without the checkbox image and it is the same thing. Thanks for your help!
for(NSString *theTask in theTasks){
NSButton *theCheckBox = [[[NSButton alloc] initWithFrame:NSMakeRect(xCoordinate + 25, yCoordinate + ([tasksWindow frame].size.height/2) - 60, [tasksWindow frame].size.width - 40, 25)] autorelease];
[theCheckBox setButtonType:NSToggleButton];
[theCheckBox setAction:#selector(taskChecked:)];
[[theCheckBox cell] setBackgroundColor:[NSColor clearColor]];
[[theCheckBox cell] setBordered:NO];
NSAttributedString *theTitle = [[[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#", theTask] attributes:[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject:[NSColor whiteColor] forKey:NSForegroundColorAttributeName]] autorelease];
[theCheckBox setAttributedTitle:theTitle];
[[tasksWindow contentView] addSubview:theCheckBox];
yCoordinate -= 20;
}
UPDATE: I've been able to confirm that setting the background color to clear is what seems to cause the button to stop responding to clicks within its full boundaries (not the removal of the border).
So to answer my own question, it was because I was overlaying the transparent buttons atop a transparent NSWindow (which refuses mouse events). I simply had to set the window NOT to ignore mouse events and the behavior went away.

How to customize / style a UIPopoverController

I'm working on an iPad application and I'm using UIPopoverControllers. I'm at the part where the app needs to be branded and styled and i'm wondering how to change the color / tint of the UIPopoverController? Standard is dark blue but it needs to be another color..
is this possible?
Greets, Thomas
This is possible starting in iOS 5.0 by subclassing the abstract class UIPopoverBackgroundView and assigning your subclass to the popoverBackgroundViewClass property on your UIPopoverController instance. Unfortunately there is no tintColor property as the popover needs to use images for it's arrow and border in order to achieve smooth animations during dynamic resizing. You can learn more about how to customize the appearance of a UIPopoverController in the UIPopoverBackgroundView Class Reference
It's impossible for now.
It's what I call the "Box in a Box" model. You get control of the box inside of the box (the UIViewController inside of the UIPopoverController), but you have very limited control over the actual popover itself. Outside of the arrow direction and the size, you can't change much else. There are also options for a modal effect popover, which dims everything else when it shows up, but I haven't tried to get it working.
I'm sure you've noticed there is no UIPopover class by now.
The answer you want to hear:
If you really want to style one that bad, just write your own. It's really not that hard.
The link you want to click:
Cocoacontrols is an index of iOS and OSX components available on GitHub, they have some popover stuff.
iOS 7 introduces backgroundColor property of UIPopoverController which affects/includes the navigation background color as well as arrows of popover.
#property (nonatomic, copy) UIColor *backgroundColor NS_AVAILABLE_IOS(7_0);
Usage example:
if ([self.popoverVC respondsToSelector:#selector(setBackgroundColor:)]) { // Check to avoid app crash prior to iOS 7
self.popoverVC.backgroundColor = [UIColor greenColor]; // [UIColor colorWithPatternImage:#"..."] doesn't reflect the color on simulator but on device it works!
}
Note - As of now (iOS 7.0.3), in some cases (like set color using colorWithPatternImage:), the simulator (and even some devices) doesn't honor the color.
Throwing my hat in here;
I've leveraged UIPopoverBackgroundViews in iOS 5+ to add a simple tintColor property onto UIPopoverControllers.
PCPopoverController: https://github.com/pcperini/PCPopoverController
I try to trick it by customizing the view controller inside the popover and then hiding the popover border using this code:
UIView * border = [[insideViewController.view.superview.superview.superview subviews] objectAtIndex:0];
border.hidden = YES;
The app is actually still in development so I'm hoping other people will comment on this solution.
check out these latest projects leveraging UIPopoverBackgroundView
https://github.com/CRedit360/C360PopoverBackgroundView
https://github.com/GiK/GIKPopoverBackgroundView
from ios 5 onward it is can be done, here is a library
https://github.com/ddebin/DDPopoverBackgroundView
just look at the documentation , and it is quite easy
good luck
You can use Elegant Popover cocoapod for just that. You can customise shape and colour of the arrow and the popover itself. Also, you can add colourful borders to the popover.
I know this is a lousy constructed answer, but I've just been playing with the UIPopoverController's views. They do exist.
The only way to access them is from your view that is sitting in the UIPopovercontroller.
I have a navigation controller so I follow this hierarchy
UIView *test = ((UIView *)[[[self.navigationController.view.superview.superview.subviews objectAtIndex:0] subviews] objectAtIndex:1]);
UIView *test2 = ((UIView *)[[[self.navigationController.view.superview.superview.subviews objectAtIndex:0] subviews] objectAtIndex:1]);
test.backgroundColor = [UIColor greenColor];
test2.backgroundColor = [UIColor greenColor];
This isn't exactly the end goal, but it is really close.
you'll find that the_view_in_the_popover.superview.superview (maybe just one superview if you are not reaching out from a navigation controller view) is a UIPopoverView. If you cast it as a UIView and treat it as a UIView you're not really breaking any rules. I guess that is really up to apple though.
Remove UIPopoverController border:
NSArray* subviews = ((UIView*)[popupController.contentViewController.view.superview.superview.superview.subviews objectAtIndex:0]).subviews;
for(UIView *subview in subviews){
[subview removeFromSuperview];
}

Insert UImageVIew into UITextField

How can I add an image to a textfield? I saw it in a few apps, but can't get around it. Also based on the location of the curser, the imageView will be initialized (add image to next line). Thanks.
If you really mean insert an image into the text box of the textfield I don't believe this is possible. What are you trying to accomplish? There are probably more appropriate ways of doing it.
Yes We can insert imageview into textfield with the following code.
UIImageView *myView = [[UIImageView alloc]initWithImage:[UIImage imageNamed:#"text_line.png"]];
myView.center = CGPointMake(5, 27);
[letterField insertSubview:myView atIndex:0];// mgViewTitleBackGround is image
[myView release];
Go through this code.

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