Transparent Background on iPhone UIWebView

Well, Apple has hidden a little nugget in the docs that took me quite some time to dig up. Here's the simple solution to creating a UIWebView with a transparent background:

• set your background color of the UIWebView to clear
• set the css for the body to background-color: transparent
• here's the bugger... set the opaque property of the UIWebView to NO

The code looks something like this:

UIWebView *w = [[UIWebView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(10, 10, self.bounds.size.width-20, self.bounds.size.height-60)];
[w setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor]];
[w setOpaque:NO];
[self addSubview:w];
self.myWebView = w;
[w release];

And in the HTML:

body {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
width: 220px;
background-color: transparent;
}

Hope that helps someone!

Interaction Design Publication

My friend and colleague, Joe Force, pointed me to a link this morning that considers and discusses many of the finer points of XD and Interaction Design! "Thoughts on Interaction Design" was a book published in 2007 by Brown Bear LLC. There were only 1000 copies printed and a second run is not planned. So, to continue to dialogue, the complete book has been created in a web format for consumption!

The content is very well positioned and thorough on the topic of Interaction Design. It helps to frame up many of the questions and answers we as XD professionals struggle with each day.

One of my favorite sections is authored by Chris Connors of Apple:

When I entered the marketplace as a newly-conferred graduate with a Masters in Human Computer Interaction, I can recall trying to explain to my family and friends exactly what HCI was - something I still occasionally find myself doing. Describing our discipline to potential employers was a recurring challenge: many were confused by a CS degree without production programming, a design degree that didn’t deal primarily with product form, or a cognitive psychologist who wasn’t solely focused on modeling human performance or conducting experimentally-driven usability testing.

I have felt the same lack of understanding and appreciation for what we as XD professionals bring to the table but, the times are changing! It's encouraging to hear Chris' stories and see that Interaction and Experience Design are being recognized as valuable additions to a product's life cycle.

Thank you to all the contributors for their excellent insight!