Open Source iOS Library For Adding Basic Touch Handling To A UIView Instantly

There are some things that you just find yourself doing all the time, and one of those things is adding touch handling to a UIView component.

If you’ve done this before then you’ve probably created a solution for doing this, but if you don’t have one – or you are looking for something a little more elegant this open source library could be the ticket.

This library extends the UIView class adding handling for touch up, touch down, double taps, and two finger taps – all with a very clean syntax utilizing blocks.

You simply need to use code like this:

[myView whenTapped:^{ NSLog(@"I was tapped!"); }];

To add touch handling to a UIView.

The library is from Jake Marsh and you can find it on Github here:
https://github.com/jakemarsh/JMWhenTapped

A very clean and easy way for adding basic touch handling to a UIView.

©2011 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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How To Get 10,000,000+ Downloads In The iOS App Store (For Real!)

It’s always informative and inspiring to hear from successful iOS app store devs.

Just last week I posted an excellent interview with Calvin Carter who’s company Bottle Rocket Apps has won iOS development contracts with companies such as Disney and BMW (and produced some great apps distributed under their own brand too).

Here’s another great resource – a podcast – with the founders of two development companies who’s apps have so far combined for over 10 million downloads.

They are Colin Plamondon the CEO of Spreadsong (you are most likely familiar with their Classics book reading app) along with Rishi Modha and Anirudh Sharma from Fliplab  who have created many different popular apps (such as the (in)famous Talking Gremlin).

I’m usually not a fan of developer podcasts – but this one is not too long at just over 1/2 an hour and they really get into things talking about their app store successes, and failures. In this initial episode they reveal how they were able to get an edge on the competition and get their apps that much needed initial exposure.

You can subscribe and get the recording on iTunes (Free) here.

You can read further details – and listen in browser on the official announcement page here.

A very revealing and inspirational talk.

[via iOS Design Weekly]

©2011 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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Best Resources In iOS Development – October 3rd 2011

This week’s list of resources includes an easy to use XML parser, Cocos2D special effects, a tutorial on building your own custom UIControl’s and more.

The iPhone 5 event has officially been slated for Oct. 4th, and it will be interesting to see if any unexpected features are added.

Here are the resources listed in order of popularity:

1. Open Source: New XML Parsing Library With A Highly Readable Easy To Maintain Syntax - An interesting new XML parsing library with an easy to use, concise and readable syntax making extensive use of blocks.

2. Example: Create A Lightning Effect In Cocos2D Using OpenGL ES - A source code example showing how to create a cool lighting-like effect in Cocos2D with definable strike points.

3. Tutorial: How To Extend UIControl And Build Your Own Custom Range Slider Component - A tutorial showing how to create your own custom UIControls by building a slider with start and end points.

4. Open Source iOS Library For Adding Basic Touch Handling To A UIView Instantly - A very useful library allowing you to add touch handling to a UIView automatically (touch up, touch down, double tap, and two finger taps).

5. How To Get 10,000,000+ Downloads In The iOS App Store (For Real!) - A very insightfiul interview where the founders of two companies that have combined for over 10 million downloads in the app store discuss their success story, and how they were able to gain a competitive edge in the app store.

6. Tutorials: Core Animation iOS Game Development Gems - A set of tutorials demonstrating how to solve specific issues that can arise when developing games with Core Animation.

7. Open Source: Multipurpose iOS Developer Library With Many Utility Features - A massively useful library with a multitude of iOS SDK extensions, Core Data helpers, macros and more.

8. Example: Using The Facebook Open Graph Beta API To Add To A User’s Wishlist On iOS - An example project demonstrating the use of Facebook’s Open Graph API.

9. Open Source: Customizable iOS Calendar Component With Landscape Orientation Support - A calendar component with an easily changeable look, and perhaps the only open source calendar component available with landscape support.

Thanks for reading, please share this post!

©2011 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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Best Resources In iOS Development – Sept. 26th, 2011

Another week has passed and once again we have provided a selection of components, tutorials, and tools.

A small surprise this week was that the tech pundits were proven completely wrong, and there was no release of another iOS 5 SDK release.  So it will be interesting to see when the next edition of the iPhone is released.

This week’s components feature a very useful component for adding fancy text labels into your apps, a side-scrolling view component, and a very realistic page curl library that goes one step beyond the effects in previously mentioned open source controls featured on this site.

Here are the resources in order of popularity:

1. Open Source Drop In UILabel Replacement Library For Easy Fancy Text With Gradients and Shadows - An extremely useful library that will easily allow you to add text with special effects for greater impact.

2. Open Source: iPhone Component For Easy Scrolling Between Multiple Views Like Mobile Safari - A very useful control if you would like the user to be able to switch between full sized views that provides a sideways scrollable interface just like the new page interface in mobile Safari.

3. Open Source: Ultra-Realistic Page Curl Effect Library - A library for ultra realistic page curls just like in iBooks and other apps that can move and fold following a specified point.

4. How To Win iOS Development Contracts With Big Companies Like Disney And BMW - An interesting interview with the founder of an iOS development firm that has been contracted for the development of many apps for high profile companies.

5. Tool: Brilliant Free (For Now) Code Snippet Manager And Documentation Browser - A very useful tool for easier document browsing, and code snippet management.  Currently available for free in the Mac app store.

6. 2D Lua Game Development Tool From Gideros Mobile With Free License Option - A development tool that utilizes the Lua programming language, and provides it’s own ide, and graphical tools so you can get started quickly.  Provides a free licensing option.

7. News: Apps Created With The Free Qualcomm Augmented Reality SDK Can Now Been Distributed - The brilliant QCAR augmented reality SDK from Qualcomm for the  iOS platform has now left the testing phase.

8. Cocos2d-X Examples Collection Ported From Popular Cocos2D-iPhone Tutorials - A listing of many different Cocos2D-X examples that have been converted from Cocos2D-iPhone.

9. Tutorial: Integrate Cocos2D With An Interface Builder Created UI And Gesture Recognizers - A guide on integrating Cocos2D based applications with UIKit interface components.

10. Free Framework For Developing 2D Games With Unity3D - A free 2D game framework providing a large set of features to enable easier development of 2D games with Unity3D.

Thanks for reading, please share this post.

©2011 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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Best Resources In iOS Development – July 25th 2011

Another week gone by, and welcome to this listing of resources shared in the last week in order of popularity.

This week once again yet another beta was released of iOS 5 for us to install.  The release date is slowly creeping up.

Some great resources were posted on the site including open source libraries for interface improvement, free game graphic sources, and some excellent tutorials.

If you would like us to submit a resource you can do so on the submit page.

Open Source: Drop In UILabel Replacement For Beautiful Text Easily - A library utilizing NSAttributedString, and core text allowing you to quickly create labels with styled text.

Design: Free Game Graphic Sets Made Specifically For iOS Games - Some great looking sets of game art styled specifically or the iPhone and iPad complete with backgrounds, characters and game objects.

Tutorial: Easy Game Controls In Cocos2D With SneakyInput - Describes how to use the SneakyInput library in your Cocos2D game so you can quickly add a virtual joystick.

Tutorial: Using And Building OpenCV (Open Computer Vision) On iOS Devices - Tutorial along with a build script for those looking to use the OpenCV library in their apps.

Open Source: Behavioral Driven Development Testing Framework - A framework made with Objective-C and specifically for Objective-C apps enabling BDD testing.

Tutorial: Objective-C Blocks (Closures) For Beginners - The basics of using Objective-C blocks including an overview of using them in concurrency programming.

Tutorial: Building Complete Games With SpriteHelper And LevelHelper - A couple of tutorials on the usage of these excellent tools to quickly build games with Cocos2D and Corona.

Open Source: Real-Time Congress App Phonegap And Native Source Code - The source code to both a Phonegap and native app that displays real time data.

Tutorial: Texturing 3D Objects In OpenGL ES 2.0 - An excellent step-by-step tutorials for beginners to OpenGL ES demonstrating how to Texture 3D objects.

Design: Creating An App with HTML/CSS And Sencha Touch - A tutorial on how to design iPhone style interfaces with HTML/CSS and Sencha Touch.

Thanks for reading, please bookmark and share this post!

©2011 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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Tags: objective-c, phonegap, iPhone, programming tutorial, opengl es, ipad, open source libraries, opencv, open computer vision, ios

Open Source: Easy Image Gallery With HTML/CSS Complete With Swipe Support

I’ve mentioned Phonegap several times on this site, and it is a great framework for those who already have a good understanding of HTML, CSS and Javascript allowing you to quickly create apps for the iOS app store.   The disadvantage is the difficulty in making the apps to look feel like native ones.

I’ve come across a very easy to use framework allowing you to quickly create a photo library that looks and responds like a native application.  The results are beautiful.  This library runs well on any Webkit browser so that means your photo library can work on Blackberry and Android devices.

What I think is really cool though about this photo library is the feature set.  Among other things it can automatically resize to any size of screen, respond to swipes, and changes in device orientation.

The library is Photoswipe from Code Computerlove and you can try out a demo here – it adjusts to desktop browsers too:
http://www.photoswipe.com/latest/examples/jquery-mobile.html

The Github for the project can be found here:
https://github.com/codecomputerlove/PhotoSwipe

You can find the homepage with further info here:
http://www.photoswipe.com/

Just in case you’re wondering what Phonegap is, you can find it here.

Photoswipe is definitel a very useful library if you want to make an image gallery that properly supports mobile devices fast – like maybe in a website for your apps.

©2011 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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Open Source: Well Documented Three20 Replacement Library

The three20 library is an excellent iPhone library that was first released a couple of years ago and have mentioned some time ago on this website.

The library contains many utility classes allowing you to quickly add functionality commonly found in iPhone apps such as photo viewing, caching, creating your own launcher, and style sheets.  Because of this extensive feature set the Three20 library has been used in many different applications.  However one of the difficulties of using the Three20 project is that it can be difficult to find documentation.  Because of that  you can waste a lot of time looking through examples trying to figure things out.

I found a project known as Nimbus from Jeff Verkoeyen who has been very active within the Three20 community.  The Nimbus project aims to implement the functionality of the Three20 library, but provide documentation first, and features second, and it is off to a great start.

The library is not a full Three20 replacement by any means yet, but ,any features have already been implemented.  Already provided some excellent examples already included demonstrating how to create a launcher, a photo album, and how to download and cache images asynchronously and extensive documentation.

You can find the library here:
https://github.com/jverkoey/nimbus

The documentation can be found here:
http://jverkoey.github.com/nimbus/index.html

The library is off to a great start, and should be very useful if you are having difficulties getting the most out of Three20.

©2011 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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Open Source: Social Networking, Sharing And Activity Tracking Library

Some time ago I shared the Sharekit library which allows you to easily add social sharing into your iOS apps.  We’ve also seen social networking built into many apps, and especially games with Game Center.

I’ve come across a library that allows you to add a number of social networking features into any app, and it looks pretty cool.  You can add the capability for users to like and share any content within your app very easily, and you can analyze what your users are doing and improve your content and your apps based on those metrics.

The library is the pre-packaged Socialize SDK which provides a number of classes for you to easily communicate with the Socialize API.

You can find the iOS version of the Socialize SDK on Github here:
https://github.com/socialize/socialize-sdk-ios

A test app is included, you will need to register your e-mail in order to get the key required to use the Socialize API here:
http://getsocialize.com

Looks like a great way to make apps sticky and more viral without having to do much work.  Looks like many more features are on the way.

©2011 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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