Question

What are alternatives for these controls in iPhone

• Radio Button
• Check Box
• Drop Down
• x raise to Power y in UILabel
• Hyperlink

Suggestion and answers will be appreciated, thanks.

Answer 1

Almost all of these controls can be displayed using a UIWebView – if that’s not an option, have a look at the UIWebView implementations and it should give you some kind of idea.

However, if you want native controls, these are probably the best options:

• Radio Button: UISegmnetedControl
• Check Box: UISwitch
• Drop Down: UIPickerView (used in UIWebView).

x to the power of y in a UILabel is easy. Just replace your indices with unicode superscript characters… I use the following method to turn an integer into a string with superscript characters.

+(NSString *)convertIntToSuperscript:(int)i {
    NSArray *array = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:@"⁰", @"¹", @"²", @"³", @"⁴", @"⁵", @"⁶", @"⁷", @"⁸", @"⁹", nil];
    if (i >= 0 && i <= 9) {
        NSString *myString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@", [array objectAtIndex:i]];
        [array release];
        return myString;
    }
    else {
        NSString *base = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%i", i];
        NSMutableString *newString = [[NSMutableString alloc] init];
        for (int b = 0; b<[base length]; b++) {
            int temp = [[base substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(b, 1)] intValue];
            [newString appendString:[array objectAtIndex:temp]];
        }
        [array release];
        NSString *returnString = [NSString stringWithString:newString];
        [newString release];
        return returnString;
    }    
}

For a hyperlink, use a UITextView with Property Inspector -> Detection -> Links enabled and Editable behavior disabled. Of course this is also available in a UIWebView.