Are there situations where a UIAlertView is better to use than a UIActionSheet? What are the typical scenarios where you would use one over the other?
I'm programming a navigation bar button to open a UIWebView in an external application, and at first I started programming a UIAlertView, then I thought that an action sheet might be better for this situation.
Are there any formal guidelines for which to use in different situations? Thanks.
From Apple's iPhone Human Interface Guidelines:
Alerts, action sheets, and modal views are designed to communicate different things:
- Alerts give users important information that affects their use of the application (or the device). Alerts are usually unexpected, because they generally tell users about a problem or a change in the current situation that might require users to take action.
- Action sheets give users additional choices related to the action they are currently taking. Users learn to expect the appearance of an action sheet when they tap a toolbar button that begins either a potentially destructive action (such as deleting all recent calls) or an action that can be completed in different ways (such as a send action for which users can specify one of several destinations).
- Modal views provide more extensive functionality in the context of the current task or provide a way to perform a subtask directly related to the user’s workflow.