HTML pages in iPhone apps. Where to start? - iphone

I'm looking to create a small reference app. It has a UItabBar and 4 views that each load a UITableView which can be drilled down to display, essentially a page of information and pictures, like a book.
If I want to make the page a little more stylised than just using labels and image views, the common consensus seems to be to create HTML pages and load them in a web view.
Being new to this, please could someone give me some direction on where to even begin with this? As I understand it, I essentially need to develop a web page with a text editor, and then what? Actualy upload online and create a public website? It's a little confusing, and as I'm not a developer, a little disheartening to think I'll now have to learn HTML as well as Obj-C to create a simple app.
I'm sure there are some great tools or alternatives out there and if someone could recommend such avenues I'd be incredibly grateful.
Kind regards,
Ryan

If you want to display HTML pages in a UIWebView you can store them in your bundle and display them from there (so no need to put the pages online). It is best though to stick with the UI controls that Apple provides you with. If you need more customization try subclassing some of the standard controls.
If you customize your UI too much it will just confuse the user and degrade their experience.

Related

What Did IMDB Use to Code Their iPhone Trivia App?

Their app is very well done, however doesn't seem to use any of the normal controls that come standard with the framework. Now it could be they just did an excellent job of restyling those components, but I'm thinking they used something like Adobe Air or something to code it which I think is allowed now whereas it wasn't in the past.
If anyone has any insight I'd really appreciate it!
I would wager that most of the main UI is done as HTML and rendered using a web view. The rest looks like standard UI with custom images.

Best practices for designing GUI in GWT

I have recently started studying Google Web Toolkit. I have went through some walkthroughs, and I think I understand the basics and the idea. However, I have some questions on the overall architecture and design of the applications.
Let's start with the GUI. I want to build a "common" web application, where the user first sees a login page. After successful login, the user is redirected to some kind of index page and a menu is added. I created a new LoginComposite for the login page, and tried to design a nice looking HTML table using the GWT Designer. However, I find that really hard to do, as you cannot set any individual properties on the individual cells (TDs)? There's no way to specify colspan or rowspan, and I can't set any padding or margin on the cells themselves. In short, I know exactly how I would have written the HTML code, but I can't translate that to the designer. Is that just me?
Also, I am wondering about the best practice for code layout and design. I went through the StockWatcher tutorial, but that's really not a very realistic web application. For example, I would like to know how I should design different forms (should each be in a own class inheriting the Composite-class)? How should I switch between forms (for example, first a list view, then a form for editing a chosen item from the list, then a totally different page)? If I have one Composite for each page, and instantiate them when needed in my EntryPoint, would that mean that the client will download all the JavaScript for all those Composites at page load? Should I stick with only one HTML page, or should I have many?
These are questions not really covered by any GWT tutorial. If anyone know a good example of a "real" web application built using GWT, I would love to see it.
Thanks for your input!
There are a whole bunch of resources in Google IO talks. For example:
http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/sessions/high-performance-gwt-best-practices-for-writing-smaller-faster-apps.html
http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/sessions/highly-productive-gwt-rapid-development-with-app-engine-objectify-requestfactory-and-gwt-platform.html
http://www.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/architecting-production-gwt.html
http://www.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/architecting-performance-gwt.html
http://www.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/gwt-ui-overhaul.html
http://www.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/EffectiveGwt.html
Also, don't expect to be able to edit absolutely everything if you are using the GUI to build your GWT app. Good luck!

iPhone app, help pages, multiple pages, quick to develop?

I need to provide some help for my app. I'm going to have some info buttons on some screens.
Initially I'd like them to be directed to the exact help page, but I'd like them then to be able to navigate to other pages in the help system.
What should I use, I'm looking for something quick to develop and quick to modify.
I'm thinking local html pages perhaps ?
Any examples / advice
I think the best way to do this is using a UIWebView to load HTML pages from your server. This way the user doesn't leave you app and the information can be updated or change as you may need.

How do I build a wiki into an iPhone app?

I want to build an iPhone app that is really a wrapper around a wiki. Specifically, I have some static reference content that can be represented by a hyperlinked set of pages and want to build an app that will provide a nice interface over this content, including search, bookmarking, and annotating. I'm wondering what the best approach is for building something like this.
(I'm spent a fair bit of time googling for answers but pretty much every combination of search terms I can think of returns links to wikis, not links about putting a wiki into an app).
Are there libraries out there for handling wiki content (rendering, navigating links etc.)? I imagine I could just represent my content as a set of local HTML pages and point the web browser control at these but that doesn't seem right. Any ideas on how best to approach this in the iOS world?
Thanks in advance!
Try looking at TWedit, it is a wrapper for the excellent TiddlyWiki which is a single file WIKI built around JavaScript and HTML. TW is very powerful and well supported with many plugins available.

highlight a text in web view

I am using a html page in the web view. I want to track the location of the html page when I tap on the webview.Basically I want to mark the selected text in the html page.Please help me out as soon as possible.
Thanks in advance.
You're gonna have to do some javascript injection on the loaded page if it's not your own html. The javascript needs to locate the tap location and change the CSS of the element(s) where the tap occurred to highlight it. You can't do this just from UIWebView alone.
the developer of iCab Mobile (a full-featured iphone web browser) has some good discussions of things they did along those lines.
http://www.icab.de/blog/2009/07/27/webkit-on-the-iphone-part-1/
There's quite a bit involved with stuff like this. You can google around for something like "iPhone hybrid application project". There's a few opensource items out there which would be useful for learning these techniques.
Also for future consideration, it's kind of rude to suggest someone should "help you out as soon as possible".