YmsGradientButton v1.3

iOS UIButton subclass featuring property list (plist) configured bitmap-free gradients.

About

YmsGradientButton is a subclass of UIButton which supports the rendering of a gradient background and shadow with respect its control state (UIControlState). Supported gradient types are linear and radial.

Change List - Many of them, all for the better.

• Added support to define multiple gradients to render per UIControlState.
• Added support to define shadow per UIControlState.
• Added support to render a radial gradient.
• YmsGradientButton property list schema more robustly specified.
• Added version to YmsGradientButton plist specification. (Current value: 1.3)
• New -- ygbutil utility with the following features:
  • Upgrade previous plist file to current version
  • Convert plist file to JSON for easier editing via text-editor
  • Convert JSON file back to plist
• Improved error messaging and validation of plist file.
• Fixed bug to render gradient before the start location point and after the end location point.
• Support for Retina display.

Quickstart

• From the folder YmsGradientButton, copy YmsGradientButton.[hm], YmsStyleSheet.h and YmsGradientButton.plist to your project.
• Add the QuartzCore.framework to your project.
• Instantiate a UIButton in Interface Builder. With the identity inspector, set the custom class to YmsGradientButton.
• Configure the gradients of the button for the different UIControlStates normal, highlighted, disabled, and selected in the file YmsGradientButton.plist.
• You can subclass YmsGradientButton and create a plist with the subclass name to create your own custom button.
• YmsGradientButton can also be instantiated programmatically.

YmsGradient Button Property List Specification v1.3

Upgrading plist files

Previous releases of plist files must be upgraded to version 1.3 to work with this code release. To upgrade, use ygbutil in the following fashion:

    $ ygutil -i YmsGradientButton.plist upgrade

ygbutil Installation

1. From the command line, enter the directory ygbutil.
2. Modify the Makefile to define the installation directory INSTALL_DIR, if necessary. By default it is set to $HOME/bin.
3. Run make install.
4. Help for ygbutil can be invoked with the -h flag.

Editing plist files via JSON

With ygbutil one can edit the property list files by converting it to a JSON file. When editing the JSON file, color values are represented as a string in the format #AARRGGBB where:

• AA is the alpha channel value in hexadecimal form
• RR is the red color component in hexadecimal form
• GG is the green color component in hexadecimal form
• BB is the blue color component in hexadecimal form

To convert a plist file to JSON, invoke the following command:

    $ ygbutil -i YmsGradientButton.plist convert

To convert a JSON file back to a property list, invoke the following command:

    $ ygbutil -i YmsGradientButton.js convert

Notes

This code is written using ARC.

Acknowledgements

Modifications for supporting multiple gradients are taken from a fork of this project maintained by Romain Champourlier.

License

Copyright 2012 Yummy Melon Software LLC

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Author: Charles Y. Choi charles.choi@yummymelon.com