BCTabBarController
BCTabBarController is a Tweetie-style tab bar for iPhone. See below for screenshots.
Why?
There are several problems with using the standard UITabBarController including:
- It is too tall, especially in landscape mode
- The height doesn't match the UIToolbar
- It cannot be customized without using private APIs
- It has labels. Sometimes you don't need labels.
BCTabBarController is completely written from scratch using public APIs to fix all of these problems and behaves almost identically to a normal UITabBarController.
Features
- A cool little arrow that slides around to indicate the current tab
- Support for all orientations
- Same height as a standard UIToolbar
Usage
- Add BCTabBarController.xcodeproj to your project by dragging it into the Groups & Files sidebar.
- Select the added project file in the sidebar and then check the box next to libBCTabBarController.a
- Select your project's target and right-click and choose "Get Info"
- Click the + icon underneath Direct Dependencies and add the BCTabBarController target
- libBCTabBarController.a should already be in the list of Linked Libraries
- Drag BCTabBarController.bundle into your project's resources
- If you haven't already, add the QuartzCore and Core Graphics frameworks to your project
- Define the method
- (NSString *)iconImageNamein each view controller that you add to the tab bar. It should return the filename of the grey tab icon (see creation steps below) - See the example target for usage
Creating icons
Unlike UITabBarController, the tab bar icons in BCTabBars are have two pre-rendered states (four if you count the retina versions). You can use the provided tab.psd file to create those files.
- Replace the layer masks in the PSD with the silhouette of the icon you wish to create
- Save the grey layer as name.png and the blue layer as name-selected.png and add them to your project.
Screenshots
Acknowledgements
This controller wouldn't be possible without the original innovative design of Tweetie by Loren Brichter (atebits).