I'm learning jQTouch from scratch. What is the best way to learn it?
I don't seem to be able to find any proper documentation, does that mean the best way is to dig into the css itself? And keep trying?
It really depends what "proper documentation" means to you. They have certainly got some documentation, although I agree that it can be made much more comprehensive.
You should start with their Getting Started article. Then have a look at the available initialisation options, callback events, animations, etc. These are all listed on their wiki homepage.
The best resource is probably the demo, that you would be able to see most of the actions with a WebKit browser.
Peepcode has a nice introductory video tutorial on jQTouch that costs a little bit. If you're evaluating it, you may want to give it a go.
Related
I want to learn Lift. Unfortunately, all documentation which I tried either obsolete, unreadable, incorrect or combination of the above. I tried the following:
Simlply Lift. Some things from the book I tried lead to errors.
Exploring Lift. The structure of book is very bad. It's hard to read and try out code in the wild at the same time.
Lift in Action. The same as the previous but you need to pay for it.
P.S. I've seen similar questions. Most of them were asked a long time ago. Did the situation improve from the time of that writings?
P.P.S. Are there any other type safe scala web frameworks (Don't offer Play 2.0. It's not typesafe. I don't see any reason to create it in Scala).
It is unfortunately true that the state of Lift documentation is uneven at best and there are huge gaping holes.
However, the Lift community is just full of awesomely helpful people.
My recommendation is not to play around, but rather to try and implement something. If you get stuck, ask specific, direct questions about what you're trying to do, how you're doing it and why it isn't working.
So far, though I would wish for better documentation, I've been able to get every answer that I needed either through Google or on the Lift mailing list - though I expect I might ask more questions here in the future.
The Lift documentation is not its strong point. The philosophy is more "try and ask if you have any problem". Here are a few tips:
Assembla
One ressource that is really useful is http://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/liftweb, there are a lots of examples so you can progressively learn how it works.
Mailing List
Otherwise you can always use the mailing list if you have specific questions even if in my opinion it is really hard to explore it fast in order to solve a problem which was already encountered. http://groups.google.com/group/liftweb
Stack Overflow
Finally, a small community is present on Stackoverflow so feel free to ask in here. This is a good way of looking for answers and creating documentation in the same time.
Source code
Don't hesitate to explore the source code and the scaladoc if you have specific questions/doubts about the behavior of a function, they are often short and even sometimes commented! http://scala-tools.org/mvnsites/liftweb-2.4-M4/#package
Have a look at the Lift Cookbook: http://cookbook.liftweb.net/
"Simlply Lift. Some things from the book I tried lead to errors."
What exact type of errors did you have? Have you tried to follow it with "Simply Lift" examples that you can download from GitHub
https://github.com/dpp/simply_lift?
Only errors I had were related to my lack of experience with SBT, but that's another story.
I have started with Lift mostly from that source (Simply Lift + examples) and in combination with its great community and Google (ChrisJamesC has listed the main links really nice) it was quite okay for me.
I would suggest you to work out all examples given in the "Simply Lift" tutorial or at least work them out unless you feel comfortable enough to jump right "in media res" and try something by yourself. That was the best way of learning Lift for me.
Also, whenever you got stuck somewhere and can't find solution on the web, your questions would be welcome and answered on the Lift Google Group (https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!forum/liftweb). David Pollak is very often right there to answer your questions directly so I have only words of praise for this framework's community and Lift's
creator.
P.S. Lift's documentation could be better organized, some stuff could be better explained for sure, but IMHO it was just too small a price I had to pay to enjoy such beautiful framework. Learning curve is steeper than with Play, especially in the beginning, but after I "survived" the very first week it was almost impossible for me to give up of all of its advantages and original concepts (Lift's "Seven Things") and switch to another framework.
I am just curious the question above. I try to google it but most of the tutorial appear with video support related topic. So i guess stackoverflow could possible ans my curiosity.
:)
Been looking around for this a little myself, and it seems to be an interesting but still up-and-coming topic around the web.
The most concrete example I found was here where they talk of a HTML5 Video Call experiment via WebKit-GTK.
Looking into it a bit further, the actual experiment details with some coding info can be found on Ericsson Labs page here. Maybe that'll give you something to go on.
There's also talk of HTML5 video calling coming to Facebook and all, though those are just rumors. To answer your question, if these few examples are solid, I guess that Video Calling on HTML5 seems possible, though in its very early stages perhaps.
Are there any guidelines on pitfalls to avoid while developing iPhone applications?
Sure, thousands. The same is true for any software development. Unfortunately, the easiest way to enumerate them is to write them down on a sheet of paper while waiting for a friendly soul to release you from the one you just fell into.
However:
Don't try to reinvent the wheel. The iPhone API is very complete -- you just have to LOOK for the facility you need. Things are NOT always implemented the way you would expect. Read the guides, carefully. Look at the tutorials and analyze how they work. (Try changing a line here or there in the tutorial to see what difference the change makes.) The single biggest mistake I have made in 1 year of iPhone development is not trying hard enough to find the iPhone way of doing something.
Don't ignore memory management; master it early and often. Use the Object Allocation and Leaks tools in Instruments to check for memory leaks frequently. I'd recommend checking after you complete each feature or view; more often than that if you keep finding bugs. Eventually you may understand it so well you can stop doing this.
Don't just use the default build settings. Play around with them to understand what they do. Figure out certification and distribution. GET INTO THE DEVELOPER PROGRAM QUICKLY -- it can take a while to push through that pipeline. [ AND when you get that notification that you need to renew, get it on instantly -- there have been problems with that process. ]
Don't neglect to read the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) carefully. If they say not to do something -- DON'T DO IT. Apple will reject applications that misuse their iconography.
Don't stint on marketing. Yes, the App Store puts your app in front of millions of people... In theory. But the odds of getting front-paged are slim. There are a lot of great apps on the App Store that haven't sold much because no one knows about them.
Don't rest on your laurels. If a new technology comes out, find out if it makes your job easier; if it does, take the time to learn it. Personal example: I'm just now trying to switch from SQLite-based data management to Core Data, because I was in a hurry at the time I started my most recent project; now I wish I had slowed down and thought about it.
Don't go into your design thinking (for example) "How do I implement my concept with a table view?" It's true that table views are natural for many informational and utility applications, but don't be constrained. Instead, think about what users will want to be able to do, how you can make it easier for them -- put things together that will be used together, etc. If you've never explored the concept of Use Cases, read up on them.
Don't hesitate to build composite views. Many of the questions I have seen here on Stack Overflow have to do with putting a toolbar at the top of a table, or having an image in the background of a text field. I understand the desire to do things the easy way, and as I state in #1 above, if there is an easy way, use it. But in many cases the solution is just to layer a couple of views with appropriate placement and transparency.
Think about what might be Apple-approved from the start.
App Rejected is one of several useful sites to help understand Apple's mostly undocumented standards. (One more.) (A previous question on app store rejection reasons.)
A few quick examples:
Using a UIWebView can get your app a 17+ rating.
Coding with an undocumented/private API = rejected
Version number < 1.0 might= rejected
Not enough feedback about network success/fail = rejected
Too much network use = rejected
Clearly limited free version vs full version = rejected
The word 'iPhone' in the app name = rejected
The above links contain many more examples, and more details about those examples.
Don't neglect the programming guides. While the documentation is quite extensive, the programming guides contains a veritable trove of useful tips and "insider" information that simply cannot be gleaned from reading method definitions. I spend just as much time reading the guides for a technology (say, Core Data) as I do actually implementing it.
Don't assume you know what a method does. If you have any degree of doubt about the functionality of a method, it is well worth your time to go look it up in the documentation to verify.
Wonderful examples from #Amagrammer above.
I would love to add that the first place to start is iPhone development is Photoshop. This is still the best advice I can give to anyone who is starting out. I now use OmniGraffle because it has awesome stencil templates.
What I find is that even for super simple app's, draw up your prototype and look for usability issues and work flow issues. It is 100x quicker to redraw your app than re-code it. I have fallen into this trap numerous times and now actually draw up some pretty simple functionality to see what it will look and feel like.
This advice will save you 10s maybe even 100s of hours in hopefully getting your app right first time and getting you to think through what the issues are. Throwing away code sucks and I have done it not because the code was bad but because it made the usability or solution worse. I think the best of us end up throwing code away and prototyping your design definitely will help in having to RTFM for something you did not have to build in the first place.
If you don't have an great designer, and can't do great design by yourself, then don't even start iPhone app development. This rule only applies if you want/need to make money with your apps.
I've been evaluating a framework that on paper looks great. The problem is that the sample code is incomplete and of poor quality. The supplied reference implementations are for the most part not meant to be used (so they can be considered as sample code as well) and have only succeeded at confusing me.
I know that it's common for things to look better on paper, but my experience with the sample code is turning me away from further investigation.
Do you let poor code samples change your judgment of frameworks/libraries? So far my experience has been similar to the "resume effect": if someone doesn't put the effort into spell checking their resume, they probably won't get the job...
For me, it does. I tend to want to avoid libraries where the code samples are incomplete. If the library is open source, I will overlook it, since I can directly look at the code and see if the library's internals are reasonable, and I know that, if there is a problem someday, I could (if I had to) fix it.
If the library is commercial, and their samples and/or documentation is poor, I look elsewhere. I just see it as risk management - poor samples make me fear the quality of the library in general.
No matter how good something is on paper or in theory, it can still be crap when programmed.
I think this is a valid reason to turn away from and evaluate other libraries. As a potential user of a library a lack of documentation and/or bad code samples gives the impression that the library is not yet mature enough for use by third parties. In time it may well gain the missing pieces but until then I think its reasonable to look elsewhere.
I was recently evaluating the multitude of blogging applications that people have uploaded to github.com I quickly skipped ones that no documentation as they obviously weren't ready for others to use. The ones that remained at the end had a good README with info on how to get the app up and running as well as an online example of the code running.
Poor code samples combined with poor documentation will make me turn away from a library unless there is a compelling reason to use it. However, a library that has either good code samples or good documentation is usually worth using. (Assuming that the library itself otherwise meets my needs.)
If I can't find good examples (and/or documentation) illustrating how to use the library, I'm definitely less likely to use it - just as a practical matter, it'll be harder for me to figure out how. But I don't care what the code that implements the library itself looks like. I don't think I'd choose one library/framework over another just because the developers of the one have shown an ability to write cleaner code (which is what I understand the "resume effect" to mean).
Lack of documentation and examples makes me a whole lot less likely to use that particular library. It's not worth my time testing and trying to figure out how a black box works if there are alternate solutions to the problem out there.
Yes, definitely. Every library should come with a simple example using program and a CLI interface (for very simple libraries with <3 methods and <10 hooks, one example should suffice).
And why does your framework "look great" if it's so hard to use that even the original coders make mistakes using it?
It certainly matters to me. Evidence of sloppy/incomplete coding and poor communication decreases my confidence that the actual implementation code is stable and robust.
Myself yes, but there must be people out there who aren't turned off by this otherwise there are plenty of open source projects that would have died a long long time ago.
Does anyone know a good beginners guide to using OpenGLES on the iPhone? I have found some but they all require assumed knowledge which I don't have.
Simon Maurice has some great tutorials on the very first steps. Take a look: http://www.cocoachina.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category%3aSimon_Maurice_iPhone_OpenGL_ES. Do them from the beginning and you'll have a good sense of the basics.
EDIT:
Backup link
Source code
You need only one reference:
http://www.khronos.org/opengles/sdk/1.1/docs/man/
Yeah, some of the documentation doesn't make a lot of sense the first time you read it, but really, read the sentence/paragraph/page again, and again. It really does make sense, and it's very accurate. Which is something you really can't say from tutorials. Tutorials are almost always written by people that don't seem too fussed about leaving out important details while documentation like that is usually written by very nitpicky people that cram every little important fact into (possibly overly-complex) sentences.
Oh, and one golden tip: Add a search function to your browser that does this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%s+site%3Awww.khronos.org%2Fopengles%2Fsdk%2F1.1%2Fdocs%2Fman%2F&btnI
(replace %s by whatever your browser's search term replacement string is, the above example is for Opera)
I've bound it to the o prefix, so whenever I need to look something up on OpenGL/ES, I just type o glDrawElements in the address bar and instantly get the documentation page on it.
Once again, if I may plug my own work, I have a short writeup on what I learned while writing Molecules for the iPhone. I came into this having no experience with the 3-D side of OpenGL (I had done a little 2-D hardware acceleration before), so I have a bit of a different perspective on the subject. The source code to Molecules is available, so you might be able to learn something from poking around inside it. I also have written a post on how to use Core Animation structures and functions to accelerate OpenGL ES rendering, if you want something a little more technical.
Bill Dudney has a post here about how he started getting into OpenGL ES, and then a follow-on here where he provides code for a Wavefront OBJ loader for the iPhone.
I believe that I've seen a few more good resources around Stack Overflow in various answers, so you might search around and see what else you can find here.
For OpenGL NeHe is a great tutorial. Though, it doesn't specifically cover OpenGLES, it should still be pretty helpful. Just be prepared to run into things now and again that won't work on the iphone.
Also you can get v1.1 if "The Red Book" online.
Simon Maurice's tutorial can be found here
"The Red Book" is not recommended to OpenGL/OpenGLES beginner. It is book for professionals.
The first step is should try to run downloaded simple programs or simple codes from OpenGL web sites.
Here's a good (non-Chinese) link to Simon Maurice's tutorials:
http://web.me.com/smaurice/iPhone_OpenGL_ES_Blog/iPhone_OpenGL/Archive.html
His tutorials are excellent; they're what I used to learn OpenGL ES.
In addition to "The Red Book", another useful book -with tutorials and reference- is OpenGL SuperBible.
Again not OpenGLES specific, but I believe it is useful to learn OpenGL features in general, then filter out the ones you don't need.