Hi, I want to implement dialog borders that scale to the size I require the dialog to be. Perhaps there is a better more conventional name for this sort of thing. If there is, if someone would edit the title, that'd be great.

Anyhow, I'd like to do this so I can have dialogs of any size without the visual artifacts that come with scaling border art to small, large, or wacky unproportional dimentions. I have a few ideas on how this is done, but am not sure which is better for iphone. I have a few questions.

1) Should I make a containing view object that basically overloads its drawRect method and draws the images where they should be at their appropriate scale when the method is called, or should I main a containing view object that simply contains 8 UIImageViews? I suspect the latter approach won't work if I need to actively scale the resulting dialog class like in an animation.

1b) If overloading drawRect is the way to go, does someone have some sample code or a link to an example that demonstrates drawing an image directly from drawRect()?

2) Is it generally better to create

a) a 3 x 3 image where the segments are in their appropriate 1x1 grid of the image? If so, is it simple to draw from a portion of this image onto my target view in drawRect (if the former assumption is correct that I should use drawRect)?

b) The pieces separately in 8 different files?