Programming iOS 6, 3rd Edition

UILabel

UILabel was introduced briefly in Chapter 21 (in Built-In Cell Styles). If you’re configuring a UILabel through a plain NSString, by way of its text property, then you are likely also to set its font, textColor, and textAlignment properties, and possibly its shadowColor and shadowOffset properties. The label’s text can have an alternate highlightedTextColor, to be used when its highlighted property is YES (as happens, for example, when the label is in a selected cell of a table view).

If you’re using an NSAttributedString, then you’ll set the label’s attributedText property, and you’ll probably want to leave those other properties alone; they do still work, but they’re going to change the attributes of your entire attributed string, in ways that you might not intend. Setting the text of a UILabel that has attributedText will basically eliminate the attributes. The highlightedTextColor property does not work on the attributedText.

Note

The nib editor also includes an ingenious interface for letting you set attributes of the text of a label, and of other classes that accept attributed strings in iOS 6; it’s not perfect, however, and isn’t suitable for dealing with lengthy or complex text.

If a UILabel consists of only one line of text (numberOfLines is 1, the default), then if you set its text, any line breaks (@"\n") are treated as spaces; but if you set its attributedText, line breaks are honored and you won’t see whatever follows the first line break.

If a UILabel consists ...