iOS 7 TableView in a ViewController and NavigationBar blurred effect - ios

Question

I started building a TableView in my app by using a TableViewController in a storyboard. When you do this, you have a very cool effect when you scroll down your list : the cells moving behind the nav bar get blurred.
Some time later, I had to move from this TableViewController to a ViewController with a TableView inside (I had to add other views at the bottom of the table).
In order to avoid having the first cells hidden by the navigation bar (being over it), I added constraints to the Top and Bottom Layout Guides, and to the left and right edges of the view.
This works fine, but I lost the cool blurred scrolling effect : the cells seem to be disappearing before going behind the navigation bar.
I've seen workarounds with people not using constraints and putting magic numbers in interface builder. I cannot do this, first because I dislike it, and second because I have to be iOS 6 compatible.
What did I miss to be able to benefit again from the blurred navigation bar effect ?

Answer 1

You have to manually adjust the contentInset of the table view and make sure the table view frame origin is 0, 0.
In this way the table view will be below the navigation bar, but there will be some margin between the content and the scroll view edges (the content gets shifted down).
I advise you to use the topLayoutGuide property of the view controller to set the right contentInsets, instead of hard coding 64 (status bar + navigation bar).
There's also bottomLayoutGuide, which you should use in case of UITapBars.
Here is some sample code (viewDidLoad should be fine):
// Set edge insets
CGFloat topLayoutGuide = self.topLayoutGuide.length;
tableView.contentInset = UIEdgeInsetsMake(topLayoutGuide, 0, 0, 0);
By the way, this properties of UIViewController might help you (you should not need to change their default values, but I don't know what your view hierarchy is):
automaticallyAdjustsScrollViewInsets
edgesForExtendedLayout
extendedLayoutIncludesOpaqueBars

Answer 2

The tableView needs to be full screen. That is underneath the top and bottom bars. Note don't use the top and bottom layout guides as they are used for positioning relative to the bars not underneath.
Then you need to manually set the content inset of the tableview. This sets the initial scroll position to under the top bar.
Something like:
CGSize statusBarSize = [[UIApplication sharedApplication] statusBarFrame].size;
CGFloat h=MIN(statusBarSize.width, statusBarSize.height);
UIEdgeInsets e = UIEdgeInsetsMake(self.navigationController.navigationBar.bounds.size.height + h,
0.0f,
0.0f,
0.0f);
self.tableView.contentInset = e;
Not you get this functionality for free when using a tableView controller and the "Automatically Adjust content inset" settings

Answer 3

You probably have the coordinates of your tableView not set to (0, 0) to map to those of the viewController.view.frame or viewController.view.bounds. If you have done that, try setting
self.navigationController.navigationBar.translucent = YES;

Answer 4

UIViewController property edgesForExtendedLayout does the trick. If you are using storyboards just make sure Extended Edges Under Top Bars is on (and it is by default).
If you are creating your view controller programmatically try this:
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
self.edgesForExtendedLayout = UIRectEdgeAll;
}
And of course, your table view needs to have proper autoresizing mask/layout constraints

Answer 5

edgesForExtendedLayout is not what you want here, as this will limit the table view underneath the navigation bar. In iOS 7, the view controllers uses fullscreen by default, and the property controlling where the tableview content starts is automaticallyAdjustsScrollViewInsets. This should be YES by default, so check if it is somehow set to NO, or try setting it explicitly.
Check this answer for a good explanation on how this works:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/19585104/1485715