ILAlertView

iOS alerts with a customizable appearance.

Version 1.4.1

Overview

Sick of the appearance of iOS' default UIAlertView? Or have you ever spent so much time hand-crafting your own unique UI, only to find that the pesky blue UIAlertView ruins it? ILAlertView, a subclass of UIView, is an attempt to alleviate that longing for more control over how alerts in your app look.

ILAlertView is meant to be an app-wide replacement of alert views, and thus the customization takes place at compile-time. Simply edit the relevant constants in ILAlertViewConfig.h and every instance of ILAlertView in your app will have the same streamlined appearance.

Animations are subtle but smooth and they look pretty neat! Just call a single method that configures and displays the alert, and the implementation takes care of the rest.

See ILAlertView in action in this short demo on YouTube.

As of v1.0, ILAlertView only supports either a single close button that simply closes the alert, or 2 buttons side by side. The second button can be configured by conforming to ILAlertViewDelegate to perform an action. More buttons can be added in the future if this is desired.

An alert with a short message:

An alert with a long message:

An alert with 2 buttons:

How to use

A demo project ILAlertViewDemo is included to show how ILAlertView can be integrated into a project.

Preparation

1. Copy the following 4 files into your Xcode project. Be sure to check "Copy items into destination's group folder".
   • ILAlertView.h
   • ILAlertView.m
   • alertBkg.png
   • alertBkg@2x.png
2. To use your own background image, replace alertBkg.png and its @2x version with your own, making sure it has resizable edge caps of 10px all around.
3. Add the QuartzCore framework to your project by clicking on your project's name at the top of the sidebar in Xcode, then going into "Build Phases". In this tab, expand "Link Binaries With Libraries" and add QuartzCore.framework.
4. Add the line #include "ILAlertView.h" to the YourAppName-Prefix.pch file in the "Supporting Files" group. This way, ILAlertView will be available to every file in your project without needing to keep adding a #include.

Display a simple alert

To initialize and display a simple alert view with just a close button, use the following code:

[ILAlertView showWithTitle:@"Incorrect Credentials"
                   message:@"Please type a matching username and password."
          closeButtonTitle:@"OK"
         secondButtonTitle:nil
        tappedSecondButton:nil];         

… and that's it!

Note: -showWithTitle:message:closeButtonTitle:secondButtonTitle:tappedSecondButton: returns the instance of ILAlertView that it displays, but the return value can be ignored if all that is needed is a simple alert.

Display an alert with 2 buttons

To initialize and display an alert view with 2 buttons, use the following code:

[ILAlertView showWithTitle:@"Change background?"
                                        message:@"Are you sure you want to change the background color of this window?"
                               closeButtonTitle:@"No"
                              secondButtonTitle:@"Yes"
                             tappedSecondButton:^{
                                [self toggleBackground];
                             }];

Customization

The following are the constants defined at the top of ILAlertView.m. Override these to customize ILAlertView for your app.

Background Pattern Image (UIImage)

kILAlertViewBkgPatternImage
The background of the alert view. This should be a pattern image that can be seamlessly tiled in multiple directions.

Fonts (UIFont)

Defaults are configured to use the system font, but for iOS 6 apps, setting these to use the Avenir font family makes really nice ILAlertViews!

kILAlertViewTitleFont
The font of the alert view's title. Preferably a moderately bold font.

kILAlertViewMessageFont
The font of the alert view's message. Preferably a regular font.

kILAlertViewButtonFont
The font of the alert view's buttons. Preferably a moderately bold font, smaller in point size than the title font.

Colors (UIColor)

kILAlertViewTitleColor
The color of the alert view's title text. Make this the color of your apps' color theme.

kILAlertViewMessageColor
The color of the alert view's message text. This is black by default.

kILAlertViewCloseButtonColor The color of the alert view's close button text when not selected. This is black by default.

kILAlertViewCloseButtonColorSelected The color of the alert view's close button text when selected. This is set to be the same as kILAlertViewTitleColor.

kILAlertViewSecondButtonColor The color of the alert view's second button text when not selected. This is black by default, and can be changed to differentiate between the two buttons.

kILAlertViewSecondButtonColorSelected The color of the alert view's second button text when selected. This is set to be the same as kILAlertViewTitleColor, and can be changed to differentiate between the two buttons.

Requirements

• ARC
• iOS 5.0 or later
• The QuartzCore framework

Contact

Isaac Lim
isaacl.net

Credits

• The "Debut light" pattern from Subtle Patterns by Luke McDonald.
• darthpelo for implementing block callbacks in v1.2.

Version History

1.4.1

• BREAKING: renamed the misnomered function …tappedButtonIndex: to …tappedSecondButton:. Implementation code will have to be changed.
• Refactored code, and removed ILAlertViewConfig.h. The configuration constants are now in ILAlertView.m.

1.4

• Reorganized to better adhere to Objective-C standards
• Changed background color to an image, added a shadow.

1.3

• Added landscape support

1.2

• Removed delegate methods
• Added block callbacks to manage button taps (darthpelo)

1.1

• Slightly rounded edges
• Alert message text center aligned
• Bug fixes

1.0.1

• Imported QuartzCore into ILAlertView.h so the user doesn't have to do that in the prefix header.

1.0

• First publish to Github

License

ILAlertView is distributed under the terms and conditions of the MIT license.

Copyright (c) 2013 isaacl.net. All rights reserved.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.