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NUI: style your iOS app with style sheets (github.com/tombenner)
85 points by jamesjyu on Dec 5, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 28 comments



A really interesting project which I feel might make web developers more comfortable with iOS development.

As an iOS developer however, I find that using Interface Builder or pure code is much more flexible and simpler to use than a CSS stylesheet.


A strategy that I found works really well to quickly style everything is to create a category on UIView that defines a block property decorated with UI_APPEARANCE_SELECTOR, then on the setter, invoke the block. Then set the appearance proxy on app startup:

  [[UILabel appearance] setStyleBlock:^(id view) {
    UILabel *label = view;
    label.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
  }];
The advantage is that you can style properties that aren't supported by UIAppearance natively, since a block just gets run when the view is ready to be styled. You also can style subviews from the same block (ie. title label inside of a warning view should be red and bold).


Relevant: http://www.pixate.com/


I was very excited about Pixate when I followed your link, but after the initial excitement it turned out that it's one of those stupid MVP (potentially) vaporwares that's just a cute landing page with a form for "give us your email so we can let you know when it's available" in the signup/download link... It's a concept, not a product. And for all we know, it could take a year or two before it's released. Yet, the landing page makes you believe you can use it today:

"Long gone are the days of tedious image slicing [..]. With Pixate, designers and developers alike can conceive, [..]. etc., etc."

I really hate such "tricks". If it's a concept, just say so in the landing page - we won't kill you! We will find out in the end - it's hardly a secret, and will be pissed when we click "Download SDK Now!" and find out it's in the early stages of development...

I might've been interested in backing them up on KickStarter, but I really don't trust them now (because of this trick they pulled on me). What if their framework has a serious bug (a severe memory leak)? Can I trust these guys to tell me so if I build my (imaginary) $50,000 app using their framework? No, I don't feel that confident.


As someone who backed them on kickstarter I probably have a biased perspective, but it seems to me that the product is coming along very nicely. They are quite open to with the development of Pixate to backers. There is also a Pixate demo app on the app store to see how it works on a device. Pity they haven't been so open with nonbackers.


I would be very interested to know how this compares to Pixate.

Pixate appears to be a large project and very ambitious, so I am surprised to see NUI appear, seemingly out of nowhere.


No surprise, any good/successful idea is always copied.


I'm really glad this is open source. I intend to make use of it in any new apps I start, and contribute back any bug fixes or improvements.

As it happens, I was going to build something like that for an app I'm due to start tomorrow, but now I don't have to.


I'd use something like this if it was built by apple but I can style apps quickly enough as is without going out of my way to implement this.

As others have mentioned it's not really a "drop-in solution" and it doesn't look to be much faster than just creating categories that return styled objects you need eg: [UIButton greenButtonWithText:@"Sign up"]; [UILabel headerLabelWithText:@"etc, etc"];


Looks good I may use it. Looks like you are using the MIT license which is nice and permissive but could I suggest that you leave the heading ("The MIT License") in so that people can see at a glance that it is that.

That assumes that you haven't changed the licence at all.

[Edit: License does seem unchanged. I've sent a Pull request if the creator does want to make this change.]


The Three20 guys tried something similar a few years back: http://three20.info/extension/extCSSStyle.

It's a pretty neat concept, particularly if you have web content that needs to be styled in coordination with your app's chrome.


Coincidentally I submitted a HN article earlier that included this on a list of libraries.

HN discussion url: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4880974


I REALLY want something like this. Like the others said, it must use appearance proxies whenever possible. I literally want to add the source files, edit the .nss file and it works.


It's hardly a 'drop-in' solution if you have to change all your UI views to inherit from the NUI equivalents.

I could never use this based on that requirement.


I wonder if something could be done with the appearance proxy, or even something as simple as a #define from UIView to NUIView in the pch, that would make this even more drop in.


Could use categories rather than subclassing at first glance.

Of course, usually my first glances are wrong.


[NUIRenderer renderButton:myButton];


Yeah that doesn't really make it drop-in either though does it.

The fact you have to litter you code with NUI references is a non-starter for me.

They should have leveraged the UIApperance proxy. I know they have some reason about gradients or something for not using it, but that shouldnt force a compromise in the design.


Can't speak for the author but UIAppearanceProxy is iOS 5.0+, also only a subset of the UI classes respond to the UIAppearance protocol.


Yeah, though targeting iOS 5 and up is really a non issue these days.

UIAppearance actually supports any property on any UIView, including your own custom classes. The UI_APPEARANCE_SELECTOR declaration on the UIKit properties is little more than for the purpose of documentation to make it clear what is officially supported and tested for.


Thanks for this info. So that means that UIAppearance is just some implementation hack on KVC? That is very useful and very ugly at the same time.


I'd love to try this out with RubyMotion.


Teacup is a RubyMotion-only stylesheet. https://github.com/rubymotion/teacup


Don't forget Motion Layouts as well: http://malkomalko.github.com/motion-layouts/


Are there any (dis)advantages between the two?


Hm, I see NUI uses method swizzling, which in fact a potential reason for app rejection.


Wow super cool - i wonder if it works with ruby motion? I don't know why it wouldn't.


Anybody tried it with RubyMotion yet?




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