What's the best way to skin my iPhone app (similar to how the Notes app is skinned)?

Question

If you look at the Notes app on the iPad, you can see it uses all native iPhone controls, but they're "skinned" to look like a pad of paper. What's the best way to implement something similar to that? Could I use interface builder and simply change the background image for each of the controls, including the TableViews?

Thanks in advance for all your help! I'm going to continue researching this question right now.

Answer 1

It's a little more complicated than that. My suggestion is manifold:

1. Hire a real designer to make the artwork.
2. Subclass whatever controls you want to skin, and handle this business directly in drawRect:. Interface Builder will not help you in this instance.
3. Consider drawing your controls programmatically instead of using images; a really cool thing would be to cache the programmatic drawings so that they only have to be performed once.

Best of luck!

Answer 2

This article from Dr Touch will probably come in handy: Stuff you learn from reverse engineering Notes.app