When to use a UIAlertView vs. UIActionSheet

iphone objective-c cocoa-touch alerts
nevan king picture nevan king · Jul 28, 2009 · Viewed 10.5k times · Source

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.

Answer

Brad Larson picture Brad Larson · Jul 28, 2009

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.

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