iPhone Open Application Development

Chapter 7. Advanced UIKit Design

Chapter 3 introduced the UIKit framework, which is the heart of all GUI applications on the iPhone. This chapter covers the most aesthetically rich components of the iPhone's UIKit framework and shows you how to make your own software look as spectacular as Apple's own preloaded applications.

Remember that to tap into the UIKit, your application must be linked to it. Just like any other framework, UIKit is a shared object. Using the tool chain, UIKit can be linked in by adding the following arguments to your command-line arguments:

$ arm-apple-darwin-gcc -o MyApp MyApp.m -lobjc \
    -framework CoreFoundation \
    -framework Foundation \
    -framework UIKit

If you're using a makefile, as illustrated in Chapter 2, add the UIKit framework to the linker flags section:

LDFLAGS = lobjc \
         -framework CoreFoundation \
         -framework Foundation \
         -framework UIKit

The following advanced components of UIKit will be covered in this chapter:

Controls

UIKit provides a set of controls that include switches, segmented controls, and sliders. Controls are used in preference tables, navigation bars, and other visual elements. The UIControl class is designed to be a versatile widget-type class capable of connecting to many different types of objects.

Preferences tables

A special type of view class has been designed specifically for managing program settings. Preferences tables provide hooks for wiring up controls and allow logical groupings of similar options. The preferences table view ...