Question

I’m trying to add a UIView on top over the UITableView to mimic the iPhone Facebook style menu. I have it working fine by making the controller a UIViewController then adding a tableview however I am unable to make the menu a static menu unless the controller is a UITableView.

Is it possible to add a view ontop of a tableview and only make the tableview in the background scrollable without the view in the foreground scrolling?

Here is what I have with the subclass being UIViewController

But I am unable to make the tableview cells static via IB since it is not a subclass of UITableView Controller.

EDIT per NSJones Code:
It seems to be going somewhat in the right track. However the view still blocks the table. If I remove the view from the storyboard it will only display the table.

Answer 1

You can make a view hover the same way you make any real thing hover; Hold it up with something invisible.

Basically what you want to do is create a clear UIView (with user interaction disabled) that is the size of your view controller’s view, and add it as a subview to your view controller’s view property. That way it sits invisibly on top. then you can add a subview to that clear view and that subview won’t move.

Edit:

It seems this nice clean approach won’t work for you since you need your view controller to be a UITableViewController. The answer for this slightly more complex approach is to use a delegate method for UIScrollView which also works for UITableView. Apple has a fantastic demo of this concept in the WWDC2011 - Session 125 - UITableView Changes, Tips, Tricks video. If you can watch it I highly recommend it. The meat of this issue begins at about 36:10.

But to sum it up you implement the scrollViewDidScroll: delegate method. And handle the movement of the tableview by adjusting the position properties of the view. Here I am keeping an UIView property named viewToKeepStill still using this method.

-(void)scrollViewDidScroll:(UIScrollView *)scrollView{
    // CGFloat stillViewDesiredOriginY; declared ivar
    CGRect tableBounds = self.tableView.bounds; // gets content offset
    CGRect frameForStillView = self.viewToKeepStill.frame; 
    frameForStillView.origin.y = tableBounds.origin.y + stillViewDesiredOriginY; // offsets the rects y origin by the content offset
    self.viewToKeepStill.frame = frameForStillView; // set the frame to the new calculation
}