The interface of my iPad app has multiple section boxes (looks similar to this stackoverflow page). I'm new to xcode and iOS programming but have years of web development experience. I would like to know what is the best way to design this.
Should I put everything in one xib file? (section1headerlabel, section1text1,section1text2..)
or should each section be its own xib file? (like server side include in web dev) if so how do I do this?
Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.
I find that if I'm doing complex things, I generally skip Interface Builder all together and create the view hierarchy using code. I can do better encapsulation this way.
For information on how to do this, check out this q&a: What's the best tutorial for iPhone development, sans Interface Builder?
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I have done some iPhone application development but still am relatively new at it. My question is, how do I design an interface like the face interface, where you have icons that you click that take you to certain things? Is there a template for this in xcode?
Thanks
There are no templates or UIKit classes that constructs a matrix of views. You will have to implement them yourself, or read about Three20 library (specifically launcher module) if it's relevant to what you want to implement.
link : http://three20.info/showcase/launcher
I was wondering how difficult it would be to implement Sproutcore into my webpage for the simple task of being able to scroll DIV's on an iPhone or iPad with one finger instead of two.
Or is there an easier way?
Thank you in advance!
Pulling in SproutCore for just this purpose would be unwise, especially for a mobile app, as it would include far too much weight for very little added functionality for your app.
If you just want to have an iOS scroll view, there are other much lighter libraries for just this. A quick search (for "iOS html scroll view javascript") reveals:
http://code.google.com/mobile/articles/webapp_fixed_ui.html (how google does it)
SproutCore is a complete web application framework; incorporating it into an existing design for the purpose of getting touch scrolling functionality is probably more tool than you need. I'd look at JS libraries which are just interaction libraries, not application frameworks.
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
I learn x-code first time. X-code is very complicated!
Would you tell me how to make multi-view apps?
(Step by step)
I created a step by step guideline to create a multiview application here: Multiview iPhone.pdf
Michael Tuszynski's vimeo tutorial (http://vimeo.com/8930397) is helpful but has some flaws (like creating view instances whenever switching)
apple does an excellent job with their documentation. There is a TON of reference material that answers your question. they provide step by step guides for building apps with multiple views:
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/navigation/index.html?section=Resource+Types&topic=Getting+Started
Personally I don't like Apple's documentation because it almost seems to assume that you already code for cocoa on os x.
The easiest way to create a multi-view app is to start a new Tab Bar Controller based application using the template, then drag however many View Controllers you want onto the tab bar controller icon. You can set set the icons and titles on their navigation items and just design and code the view controllers just like you would if each view controller were the only one, except that you probably want to connect them somehow to some shared resource.
Check out the book Beginning iPhone 3 Development as it has excellent step-by-step tutorials on how to do several kinds of multi-view applications. It's well worth the money especially if you get it from a discount book store online or something.
Apress Beginning iPhone 3 Development Exploring the iPhone SDK Jul.2009, By Dave and Jeff. They have given a wonderful tutorial for many types of applications including multiview apps
Does anybody know where I could find WinForms controls that mimic those on the iPhone? I am interested in doing some iPhone prototyping using Visual Studio and it would be handy if I could make the controls look like the native iPhone controls.
I know that I could just use Interface Builder on a Mac, but I do not want to do this. I just want to play around with various ideas and I will be much faster in Visual Studio.
Balsamiq Mockups has some iPhone-like controls, and you get a mock up done faster than in Visual Studio.
I've had a look around for windows forms iPhone controls for mocking and positioning items and couldn't find any. However it's quite easy to do yourself with a few screenshots from the iPhone Simulator. Below is what I've done - I'll update with a download link to the project a bit later.
As mentioned Apple probably won't like, nor let you release a product using their UI style. However for mocking there is nothing to stop you doing it in Visual Studio - they still get their $99 and appstore cut.
I use Visual Studio as I do XIB-less Monotouch development in it, and want to avoid switching back and forth. For XIB-less apps, designing with interface Builder isn't much faster in my view - but that's a Monotouch-centric viewpoint.
As I pointed out here, an alternative to doing this in WinForms might be to mock up your interface using the Briefs framework. Briefs lets you use images of any kind to represent screens of your application, and assign interaction behaviors to areas of the images. You can generate a fully functional iPhone application from this for quick testing of your user interface.
There are a number of iPhone UI wireframe elements for Photoshop and other illustration applications out there, so it's pretty easy to draw up your prototype interfaces.
Since the iPhone's UIKit controls are very likely highly protected by Apple's trademark and copyrights, I wouldn't expect to find alternative implementations. Since any iPhone development will eventually require using Interface Builder, it's worth repeating what many others have said: use the right tool for the job. Learn Interface Builder (it won't take long) and quit trying to shoehorn iPhone development into the Windows tooling.
If you are interested in doing iPhone apps in C#/VB.NET, MonoTouch is the way to go
http://monotouch.net/
To me it is weird to emulate iPhone UI in WinForms as they are two worlds apart.
You can take help of this new tool Xamarin, which helps you to create the native application by using c#.