Beginning iPad™ Application Development

Chapter 5. Keyboard Inputs

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• How to customize the keyboard for different types of inputs

• The different ways to make the keyboard go away when you are done typing

• How to detect when a keyboard is visible or not

• How to shift views to make way for the keyboard

One of the controversial aspects of the iPad is the multi-touch keyboard that allows users to input data into their iPad. Critics of the iPad (as well as the iPhone) have criticized its lack of a physical keyboard for data entry (short of buying an external keyboard accessory for it), whereas ardent supporters of virtual keyboard swear by its ease of use.

What makes the iPad keyboard so powerful is its intelligence in tracking what you type, followed by suggestions for the word you are typing, and automatically correcting the spelling and inserting punctuation for you. What's more, the keyboard knows when to appear at the right time — it appears when you tap a TextField view, and it goes away automatically when you tap a non-input view. Also, it lets you input data in different languages.

For iPad application programmers, the key concern is how to integrate the keyboard into their applications. How do you make the keyboard go away naturally when it is no longer needed? And how do you ensure that the view the user is currently interacting with is not blocked by the keyboard? In this chapter, you learn various ways to deal with the keyboard programmatically.

USING THE KEYBOARD

In iPad programming, the ...