Instead of starting from scratch, I was wondering if there were any ready made iPhone functionality for presenting a store's item lists (small picture and main info) and detail pages (all images and full info).
All data is already stored in an online database and setting up Web Services or the like for communication is not a problem, but iPhone development experience is limited.
Do you know of anything of that nature that I might utilize?
Sounds like the perfect opportunity to develop a web application specifically for the iPhone. I can't remember the name of the book off the top of my head, but do know that it's offered by O'Reilly. The other upside is you will now have an app that's accessible by other devices also.
Here's the book, it even includes the hooks to interface natively to the iPhone.
A good place to start is looking through some of the code examples available at Apple's iOS developer site. I believe there is a 'Recipe List' example that might be similar to what you are looking to do. Hope that helps!
Related
iDevRecipes is an awesome site that goes into some detail on how some popular and specific iPhone components have been developed. I was wondering if the SO crew knew of any other sites similar to this? It would be a great help to all iOS developers.
I stumbled across Custom Controls for iOS last night and it looks like there are links to the source code for at least a few of the custom controls on iDev Recipes, and there are some plenty more custom controls not featured on the recipes site. I guess it's not necessarily as pedagogical as the recipes website, but you can still browse the source code which is definitely a great way to learn about making your own custom controls.
A client do not want to consider MonoTouch for a new project.
MonoTouch.info has a long list of apps, but I have not found any on the caliber that can convince a client too choose a technology. The client has seen the list, and actually use the bland screenshots as an argument against MonoTouch.
Where can I find examples of applications useful as motivation. High profile apps created using MonoTouch, the apps you call home about. The apps that made it to the top 25 lists in their category.?
I responded on Twitter but thought I'd reply properly here;
The first app I will mention is iCircuit - http://icircuitapp.com/ - this application is featured on the Apple website here - http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/apps/index.html#workflow-icircuit - and is a pretty good seller.
Diggify is a Digg application which hit the top #8 sold application in Canada apparently - http://www.intomobile.com/apps/diggify/359756952/
An application that I built myself (it's a little old now admittedly) but I do think that it looks rather nice - http://bit.ly/gfxmasappstore :)
London Bike App is another nice looking application - http://www.londonbikeapp.com/
Update: Wow, this is an old question, there's a whole bunch of great apps using MonoTouch at http://xamarin.com/apps
Hope this helps,
ChrisNTR
I know of a couple apps that were built using Monotouch and sold very well but due to the uncertainly surrounding the terms when MT first came out and later the 3.3.1 mess the devs didn't make a big fuss out of it. I suspect they aren't the only ones not publicizing what technology they used to make their app.
If your client is using a handful of screenshots on a website as the reason to rule out using Monotouch then you might want to rethink your pitch. Whether or not an app has been developed in native Objective-C or C# via Monotouch makes no difference on the overall design or appearance because both rely on the CocoaTouch framework for UI. Being able to deliver an app that meets your client's idea of what makes a great app has nothing to do with the language you use and has everything to do with your ability to translate the essence of their ideas into a solid design and UX. Sell that, not the framework.
I found this article to be helpful when I'm trying to explain to others why I use Monotouch over native objective-c.
"Why we chose MonoTouch to write the Diggify iPhone app"
I am a complete newbie(as is already evident) and I can't just figure out when to choose what. I have been through countless googling operations but found no help on the said question, hence had to ask here. It would be great if any of you could explain or even point me to some online resource which does it. Thanks again for your time.
It depends what your app needs. I've made an app which is a series of questions in a survey. For that I used a navigation based app.
However I'm now working on a complicated app which uses a series of navigation controllers within a UITabBarController. So for that I chose to start a window based application because there was going to be a lot of custom programming involved and that was the "cleanest slate" available.
Think about what you need your app to do, and remember the different projects you can start are all basically the same and you can always change them to suit your needs, its just what they all start with included thats different.
I would always recommend to start with Window based application template.
From a window based iPhone app, you can make any kind of iPhone application.
To learn:
I would recommend iPhone Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide
Get the Kindle version for your Mac - Kindle for Mac
alt text http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/3245/bnr.th.jpg
This just saves time.
Since I already have a web applciation.
I can just stick it inside a webview.
The question is: Does it turn off many users? How many users will be disgusted that the entire iPhone app is written in WebView?
I think it's pretty safe to say that most iPhone users are expecting apps to use the power of the iPhone, not just be a portal to a mobile website.
Think about facebook mobile compared to iPhone facebook app. If you're an iPhone user, I'm assuming you'd much rather use the app than a mobile version of the site (or mobile version of the site contained in a WebView in a an app).
That being said, depending on your app, if the mobile version of your app is highly usable, it could be okay...
Just my thoughts...
John Gruber on Daring Fireball just wrote about this today.
From a usability perspective, native apps usually feel better. They may also be more responsive and handle large amounts of data more gracefully. I have a few so-called "apps" on my devices which are just glorified Web apps, and they don't necessarily scream quality.
If you've already done your app, then just ship it. But keep your mind open to feedback from your users.
The answer is almost certainly "no". People care far more about the usability and experience of interacting with your application than what API-supplied widget you use to render it.
I read Apple has begun removing apps that are like this. Well technically, they remove apps they think could be easily implemented as a webapp instead. Yours obviously qualifies ;)
Source: http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/07/apple-cookie-cutter-apps/
EDIT: Apple seems to not mind, according to the Human Interface Guidelines:
If you have a webpage or web application, you might choose to use a web view to implement a simple iPhone application that provides a wrapper for it.
Of course, Apple has a tendency to contradict themselves. ;)
Apple human interface guidelines says this isn't even allowed. I forget where it comes from, but somewhere in the guideline it says apps that are only web views are not allowed. I'm about 95% sure I've seen this. Can anyone confirm?
Are there any resources or guidance out there on how to make iPhone friendly web applications?
In my case specifically, I'd like to use ASP.NET MVC, but since that all runs on the server, I know it'll boil down to just markup/css/javascript considerations.
edit: as I find other resources not mentioned here, I will update the question text :-)
CSS-Tricks ScreenCast on Designing for the iPhone
There’s an iPhone article on Sitepoint (which usefully shows you how to target stylesheets at just the iPhone, whilst hiding them from Internet Explorer—Apple's documentation doesn't).
Craig Hockenberry wrote Put Your Content In My Pocket at A List Apart.
A Flickr developer posted some lessons learned: http://code.flickr.com/blog/2008/10/27/lessons-learned-while-building-an-iphone-site/
+1 for Apple’s documentation as mentioned by Boot To The Head—horses’ mouth and all that: they have pretty comprehensive stuff on neat CSS properties that are only really supported by Safari, like CSS animations and CSS Transitions.
Scot Hanselman had a great presentation at Mix 09. Click here link.
Also look at the Mobile Device Browser File=>LINK. It is open source at codeplex.
"What is the Mobile Device Browser Definition File?
The Mobile Device Browser Definition File contains capability definitions for individual mobile devices and browsers. At run time, ASP.NET uses this .browser file, along with the information in the HTTP request header, to determine what type of device/browser has made the request and what the capabilities of that device are. This information is exposed to the developer through the Request.Browser property and allows them to tailor the presentation of their web page to suit the capabilities of the target device." - Codeplex
The definitive resource is Apple's Safari Dev Center.