According to Apple's "Human Interface Guidelines" - Navigation bars should only have one other button (apart from the standard back button)
All this is fine, but there are several apps which have numerous buttons on the top Navigation bar, such as the Facebook app (Image)
My question / discussion arises from here. . .
1) Would apple accept the use of a UIToolBar in place of a Navigation bar (with a custom "back" button", which would act as a replacement for the Navigation Bar:
2) Is this how Facebook would have achieved their top bar?
3) IF I could use a toolbar instead of a Navigation Bar, i would have a small space at the top where the toolbar would overlap the "status bar" - how should i overcome this issue? -
- would placing a A UIView, in that position with an embedded Toolbar be the correct solution to this issue?
All your help / comments / guides are very much appreciated
You don't have to show the navigation bar, it can be hidden (see setNavigationBarHidden:animated:). You can use UIToolbar instead but there are a lot of options for customizing the navigation bar.
You can set the leftBarButtonItem, the titleView, or the rightBarButtonItem to be a custom view as specified in the UINavigationController class reference. Those properties take a UIBarButtonItem but that doesn't have to be a button. You can create a UIBarButtonItem using initWithCustomView: to create a UIBarButtonItem with any UIView. It can be a UIView that has multiple buttons as subviews or a search bar or segmented control or whatever views you need as long as they fit and don't violate the HIG. You can do that with any of the 3 custom views on the navBar.
1) Would apple accept the use of a UIToolBar in place of a Navigation
bar (with a custom "back" button", which would act as a replacement
for the Navigation Bar:
My advice, when faced with a "should I possibly violate the specification by working around it and hoping they don't mind" decision, is "no". Are you willing to spend the time to change the code to the meet the spec if they don't accept it?
2) Is this how Facebook would have achieved their top bar?
I'm not sure this is answerable.
3) IF I could use a toolbar instead of a Navigation Bar, i would have
a small space at the top where the toolbar would overlap the "status
bar" - how should i overcome this issue? - - would placing a A UIView,
in that position with an embedded Toolbar be the correct solution to
this issue?
I created an App with a Tool Bar AND a Navigation Bar. See the screen shots (Review page) here. The Tool Bar is at the top, beneath the navigation bar. At one point, I added a feature to make a tap on the navigation bar hide/show the tool bar. But since the longer displays came out, I have removed it. Most users don't really seem to mind the extra small hit at the top as long as the display provides the information they need.
Was this helpful?
1) Probably. I've not seen or heard of an example of Apple bothering to reject an app that used a toolbar rather than a navigation controller. However, you may get a reviewer having a bad day that decides to reject your app for that reason; it's really impossible to know for sure, but unlikely. I will say that I've submitted an app that looks similar to apps with a navigation controller but the top bar is custom, and it was accepted.
2) The Facebook top bar is most likely totally custom. You can see that the transparency effect is unlike the standard navigation bar's transparency, and the layout is not similar to any standard apple control.
3) Align your top bar (however you do it) with the topLayoutGuide in interface builder (or in code).
Related
I need some help figuring out how to fix the layout of a navigation bar in an iOS app. When adding navigation to 'child' views of a given screen, my approach so far has been to add buttons to the 'leftBarButtonItems' collection of the UINavigation item. As long as the number of buttons doesn't exceed 3 or 4 everything works great.
Unfortunately, I now have a screen that requires additional buttons. Everything seemed to build fine, but when I actually run the application I end up with a jumbled mess like this:
Is there a better way to layout a UI with nav and toolbar buttons like this? If putting the buttons in the nav bar is actually the correct way, what do I need to do to make the layout handle cases where the content can't fit?
I wouldn't bother with adding any extra buttons. Users expect most apps to behave in similar ways, and (while this is technically possible) it's an unusual thing to do.
Apple's HIG states:
Avoid crowding a navigation bar with too many controls. In general, a navigation bar should contain no more than the view’s current title, a back button, and one control that manages the view’s contents.
And, even if you choose to ignore Apple's HIG, this will certainly won't be good for accessibility. Your users can (and will) change the text size with Dynamic Type - so your assertion that it's OK if the "number of buttons doesn't exceed 3 or 4" will be proven false by someone.
You'd be better to add a toolbar instead, or find some other way of providing those features.
The navigation bar often has the title of the previous view on the left side. The right side contains a control, like Edit or a done button, to manage content within the active view.
Navigation bar Example
Apple documentation recommends to avoid crowding a navigation bar with too many controls.
A navigation bar should contain no more than the view's current title, a back button, and one control that manages the view's contents.
For the back button you should use the standard one. As for the text-field it should have enough room. If items in the nav bar are crowded consider separation by inserting fixed space by using UIBarButtonSystemItemFixedSpace constant value in UIBarButtonItem.
For more information visit the following link.
The way to go when you need 3 or more items is by using either nav bar or toolbars. You can combine both nav bar and toolbars. For more information use apple documentation on toolbars.
So I'm struggling with a task I assumed would be easy. I'd like to place a UIView to show ads between the UINavigationBar and the top of the window like thus:
It seems like I have two options:
Option (1)
Somehow programmatically push the UINavigationBar downwards and then programmatically insert the UIView above the navigation bar and flush with the bottom of the status bar:
Option (2)
Dragging a "custom" UINavigationBar onto the main view then placing a UIView above the custom navigation bar:
In both options, I'm using a navigation controller for push transitions. In the second option, though, I hide the inbuilt navigation bar since I'm using the custom one.
I've tried both options hitting a brick wall in each. I may edit this question later to go into detail where I've got stuck.............
...........but this should be straightforward!
What's the stock-standard way of putting a UIView between the navigation bar and the status bar? Or, in other words, how do apps that show custom ads (non-iAds) up the top of the app actually show them?
I fear/hope that the solution is blindingly obvious and I'm just not choosing my google search terms wisely.
I have a noob question.
I am developing a simple app that uses a navigation controller (so, a nav bar on top, and a toolbar is shown on bottom via interface builder; I use storyboards). This nav controller shows a number of related tables (table views) on different screens.
My question is: I want to populate the toolbars for each screen. Ideally, I'd like to populate a label there that shows a little summary text about the contents of the table view currently displayed - but I understand that that may not be the purpose of those toolbars, and not be supported by the UIKit toolbar view.
But what should work (to my modest understanding) is to show buttons there - individualized for the current screen. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to do that (I tried in interface builder - but on each screen controlled by the navigation controller, the toolbar is shown, but can not be accessed; it is also not referenced in the outline for that screen - only the outline for the navigation controller shows a reference to a toolbar, and if I change anything in it, which is possible, it does not show up in any of the screens controlled by the navigation controller).
Hope this is clear enough. I think this is a very simple issue to do - but I am stuck; Google searches didn't help me. Maybe someone of You can point me to some keywords to look for?
Thanks a lot for considering!
Best regards,
Björn
What exactly are you trying to drag into the navigation controller bottom toolbar?
From my experience you are only allowed drag out Bar Button Item's along with Fixed and Flexible Spaces.
I have a pretty unique problem. I have a custom nav controller (https://github.com/cwRichardKim/RKSwipeBetweenViewControllers) and I'm trying to customize it even further. The effect I'm trying to get is this:
What I have is this (ignore the search bar):
The problem that I have is that when you click on any of the tabs in my nav bar ("public" for example), the click doesn't register, and it clicks whatever is underneath instead. For example, if I click "Munchies", it will click the search bar underneath the tab. Also, even if there is nothing clickable underneath it (I've tried this with a blank UIViewController), the tabs (eg: "Munchies") are still not clickable.
I have a theory for why this is. If I raise the tabs by a few pixels, the tops of the tabs become clickable. So, I think the navigationBar has a frame within which you can interact with its objects, but if you interact with anything outside of that frame, it interacts with lower layers. I've tried expanding the nav bar height and it doesn't work (I've looked it up and it's against the rules).
Any thoughts?
Thanks!
I read your code here that is shown here:
https://github.com/cwRichardKim/RKSwipeBetweenViewControllers/blob/master/RKSwipeBetweenViewControllers.m
I'm not exactly sure whether this will work out. But this issue has occured to me in table cell as well. Perhaps you can try typing this in.
[navigationView setUserInteractionEnabled:NO];
I'm pretty sure that your approach is on the right track because as I read Apple documentations it says:
Custom views can contain buttons. Use the buttonWithType: method in UIButton
class to add buttons to your custom view in the style of the navigation bar.
Custom title views are centered on the navigation bar and may be resized
to fit.
I'm newbie with Xcode, I'm learning it and trying to make my app.
Now I would like to put Navigation Bar func at the bottom of the screen with some customize.
I turn on "Shows Toolbar" at Navigation Controller and put my button there, but I cannot customize it.
Everything that I found about customizing Navigation Bar at the top of the screen or about customizing TabBar when people are talking about bottom of the screen.
Please, can you give me a code examples to build something like this at the bottom of the screen:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1338320/nav.png
Thanks in advance!
I'm not sure what you are trying to customize (button or bar) but when there is a bar at the bottom of the screen that is not a tab bar it is a tool bar not a navigation bar. The two are related but they each have their own class. Tool bars use UIToolBar not UINavigationBar. The tool bar is independent of the navigation controller and the two work together well. For any views that don't want a tool bar just set it to hidden in -viewDidAppear: (you will need to un hide it in views that use it).
dimimpou is right. You can accomplish this by using a UITabBarViewController and one UIBarButtonItem for "ADD ONE" and "MY STATS".
If you get lost in references(I sometimes get lost too), I may provide a simple example.
Note that if the interface provided by UIKit doesn't meet your need you can:
Use category over UITabBar or UITabBarItem.
If 1. doesn't work sadly you'll have create your own view controller which is simulate UITabBarViewController(requires some time, but it's worth)
Edit:
You can use a UINavigationController inside a UITabBarViewController.
You can easily do this. The way I understand it, you want this "Toolbar" to show from a button in the navigation bar. Just put a tab bar with what you need and make it show when the user presses the button on the navigation bar. on this buttons action put this code: self.tabBar.hidden = NO; and on the storyboard uncheck the bar visibility option. Hope it helps!