ABTabBarController is UITabBarController replacement which makes customizing your TabBar very easy / straight forward.

FEATURES:

Custom TabBar Implementation
Customizable TabBar Height
Default / Highlighted TabBarItem Images
Custom Background Image/Color
Works great with UINavigationController / UIViewController / UITableViewController
No Suprises!

USAGE:

Add All the files from the "ABTabBarController" to your project and import "ABTabBarController.h" into your desired class
Every Tab you want to be existent in the TabBar is created using the "ABTabBarItem"
AbTabBarItem *tabBarItem = [[AbTabBarItem alloc] initWithImage:defaultTabImage selectedImage:selectedTabImage viewController:viewController]; A ABTabBarItem requires you to specify the Tab's default UIImage, selected UIImage and the ViewController it's connected to.
The Images you need to supply need to be in a specific resoution, here's how to calculate the images resolution:
Height: 320 / NUMBER_OF_TABS
Width: Whatever you set as the TabBar height
e.g. if you want to have 4 Tabs in your TabBar with a height of 50px the images you need to supply for each tab will need a resolution of 80x50 (retina: 160x100)
Now you create the "ABTabBarController" and add all the created ABTabBarItems to it, you also need to specify the height and background Image:
ABTabBarController *tabBarController = [[ABTabBarController alloc] init]; tabBarController.tabBarItems = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:tabBarItem1, tabBarItem]; tabBarController.tabBarHeight = 50; tabBarController.backgroundImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"tabbar_background.png"];
Thats all there is, this should now give you complete control over you're TabBar's appearance! Be sure to check out the example app included in this repo.

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You can use this helper class in any personal & commercial project. All I ask is
that you don't sell the class itself

Feel free to contact me about any improvement requests / issues via mail
(contact@ablfx.com) or via Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/blunckalex)