Question

I got a program from a colleague and he is using .xib files to setup his view.
(being a hard core coder, I never used IB myself…)
So he is setting up his ViewControler and he has a NavBar (that I could not find in the .xib file!).

I want to add drop shadows to the title.

If I was making the NavBar, the relative code would be something like:

textViewTitle.layer.shadowOpacity = 2.0;
textViewTitle.layer.shadowRadius = 3.0;
textViewTitle.layer.shadowOffset = CGSizeMake(2.0, 3.0);

and that works fine.
Digging around I found that now I need to use this:

NSDictionary *navbarTtlAts = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
                             [UIColor whiteColor], UITextAttributeTextColor, 
                             [UIColor blackColor], UITextAttributeTextShadowColor,
                             [NSValue valueWithUIOffset:UIOffsetMake(2.0, 3.0)], UITextAttributeTextShadowOffset,
                             nil];
[self.navigationController.navigationBar setTitleTextAttributes:navbarTtlAts];

Although this works, I could not find how to add the shadowOpacity & shadowRadius stuff.

I found that I could add the following in the NSDictionary, but it did not work…

                           [NSNumber numberWithFloat: 2.0], @"shadowOpacity",
                           [NSNumber numberWithFloat: 3.0], @"shadowRadius",

Any ideas?

Answer 1

You should use these keys for the shadow color and offset.

UITextAttributeTextShadowColor 
UITextAttributeTextShadowOffset

There is no way to specify the shadow radius as a text attribute.

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If you really wanted a custom shadow you could create your own UILabel and set the shadow like in your first example. Then you would set that label as the titleView of your view controllers UINavigationItem.

You would have to update the text yourself though (the navigation controller would no longer do it for you automatically).