UIWebview -- "Open/Copy" dialog opens in wrong orientation - ios

Question

I'm doing some fancy stuff with rotation, and am returning NO from shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:. I then manually rotate a UIWebView according to [UIDevice currentDevice].orientationCached. When I hold my finger down on a link, the menu which appears is always in PortraitLeft orientation, no matter how the device is actually oriented, and no matter how the UIWebView is oriented.
It looks to me like the link menu takes its orientation from the main view of the view controller, rather than the UIWebView its associated with, and that the only way to get it to behave correctly is to return YES from -shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:.
Is this assumption correct? Is there any way to control the orientation of the link-related popup menu, or to force it to take its orientation from the UIWebView which spawns it?

Answer 1

I wouldn't actually set the orientation manually how you're doing it in the UIWebView. Instead, force the orientation of the parent view controller through code.
As an example of a similar situation, I have an app that I've developed that displays a map in a few views. When rotated from portrait to landscape, it layouts the view in a very different manner from the portrait layout with a fancy animation. I like it, but some users don't, so I provide the option to disable map rotation. And I do that by passing in only certain rotation abilities to the parent view. So if they disable landscape, I tell the parent view controller it can only rotate to landscape. Otherwise, it's free to rotate to any orientation except upside down.
Enough with the explanation: here's my relevant code I use to accomplish this:
- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)toInterfaceOrientation {
//Rotate the view if rotation is actually enabled
if ([self.prefs boolForKey:#"SHOULD_ROTATE"]) {
return (UIInterfaceOrientationIsLandscape(toInterfaceOrientation) || UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait == toInterfaceOrientation);
}
//Rotate it to portrait only if rotation is disabled
else if (![self.prefs boolForKey:#"SHOULD_ROTATE"]) {
return (UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait == toInterfaceOrientation);
}
//Otherwise, rotate only to portrait (for all views minus the map views)
else {
return (UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait == toInterfaceOrientation);
}
}
I actually implement this in the UITabBarController so that it applies to all views and view controllers in the app, but it's just as easily implemented only for the UIWebView parent view controller. The gist is that you're returning yes or no based on if the view orientation matches what you want it to. For the web view, you would want to lay out the only allowed rotation orientations to by returning this:
return (UIInterfaceOrientationIsLandscape(toInterfaceOrientation)
Of course, I haven't discussed forcing the view to set the view to a landscape view, only what it does once a user turns it. So the best course of action there is simply to manually do it once the view is initialized:
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarOrientation:UIDeviceOrientationLandscapeLeft animated:NO]
You'll have to set it to either Left or Right to start with, but the user can rotate between right and left as they wish if you implement my earlier code as well.
That's a lot of explanation, but I think the combination of these two methods for the parent view controller should allow you to present the view exactly how you wish. Let me know if you have any questions!

Answer 2

By "popup menu", do you mean the Action Sheet with Open … Copy buttons?
If so, then yes, Action Sheet always presents itself according to the top view controller's interfaceOrientation. Because you are rotating the view yourself without its controller updating its interfaceOrientation, the Action Sheet still thinks it is portrait.