Spruce Up Your Table Views

Setting the background color of your table view is very easy.  All you need to do is set the backgroundColor property to the color you want to see.  For example, I have created a table view here in the app delegate and simply set the background property from here:

UITableViewController *tvc = [[UITableViewController alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewStyleGrouped];

tvc.view.backgroundColor = [UIColor redColor];

    

[window addSubview:tvc.view];

    

[window makeKeyAndVisible];

If you are using sub-classing, you may also rather set this property in the initWithStyle.

You can use also an image as your background to really spice things up.

Here is that code:

UIView *backgroundView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame: window.frame];

backgroundView.backgroundColor = [UIColor colorWithPatternImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"TableViewBackground.png"]];

[window addSubview:backgroundView];

[backgroundView release];

    

yourTableViewController = [[ATableViewController alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewStyleGrouped];

yourTableViewController.view.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];

[window addSubview:yourTableViewController.view];

    

[window makeKeyAndVisible];

 

This one takes a little more code - essentially you are putting an image into a view, inserting that into the app window and then setting the background to a transparent color. 

Simply setting the background color of the table view to the image would produce artifacts.  

That is it!  I hope that this tip will add some more pizazz to your apps!

As you can see, the this array is sorted. There you have it!