Can you tell UIWebView to use a white indicator style?

Question

I'm running into a case where I have in-application HTML documentation that uses a dark background, but the default scroll indicator for UIWebView is getting lost in that background. The following is an example of this:

_{(source: sunsetlakesoftware.com)}

With UIScrollView, which UIWebView resembles in its behavior, you can set the indicatorStyle property to UIScrollViewIndicatorStyleWhite, which results in the desired behavior:

_{(source: sunsetlakesoftware.com)}

I can't seem to find a similar property in the exposed interface for UIWebView. Is there a CSS trick or other way to force the scroll indicator to a lighter style?

Answer 1

Starting iOS 5.0 onwards, one can now customize the scrolling behavior of the web view by accessing the 'scrollview' property to achieve the desired functionality:

webView.scrollView.indicatorStyle = UIScrollViewIndicatorStyleWhite;

Answer 2

If you do want to scan the subviews and attempt to gracefully fail if something changes in the future this currently works:

    //set a white scroll bar
    for (UIView *subview in [webView subviews]) {
        if ([subview isKindOfClass:NSClassFromString(@"UIScroller")] || [subview isKindOfClass:NSClassFromString(@"UIScrollView")]) {
            if ([subview respondsToSelector:@selector(setIndicatorStyle:)]) {
                [(UIScrollView *)subview setIndicatorStyle:UIScrollViewIndicatorStyleWhite];
            }
            break;
        }
    }

Though things could still break in the future if setIndicatorStyle: changes to expect a non-enumerated value... but I doubt that would happen.

Answer 3

Scan the subviews and test for a UIScrollView. You can then programatically set the indicator.

Answer 4

There is no public API for this in the 2.x SDK. File a bug/case/radar asking for it in 3.0.