That's just a normal UIView subclass which draws the gradient background using Core Graphics (I don't expect it to be an image) and has some UIButtons as subviews (Either staticly positioned and added to the view or all being positioned by code. Doing it staticly will make things easier but less reusable)
I'm virtually certain this a custom UIView.
It's really not all that complicated - most of the work is the nice looking button images.
You'd create a view with appropriately positioned UIButtons, then simply slide it into place at the appropriate time.
I put up a post Semi-Modal (Transparent) Dialogs on the iPhone to show how this could be done. Just create the view any way you want and use the code listed in the post to show/hide it.
im having trouble calling it from a button press (also a noob)
how do you pass the uiview of the nib to it in the buttons IBAction?
EDIT:
why is it you always figure a problem out, once you give up and post a message on a public board? .....
so for any other noobs out there here is how i did it.
ModalPicker *ctrller = [[ModalPicker alloc] initWithNibName:@"ModalPicker" bundle:nil];
[self showModal:ctrller.view ];
how do you access the parent items from the child?
IE: in your example, how did you change the colors in the parent view.
im trying to just change a lable, but i cant access the parent from the child.