I need to develop a client application for a site that host and show images.
The client should shows all new images and take a picture and send to website.
I'm a newbie to iOS programming so this question:
In an application alike this, there's the need to create a Model? I ask this question because I think I can do anything with Controllers but maybe I'm wrong.
While there is never a "need" to create a model, it's good form to do so, and it'll likely save you many headaches down the road. Ultimately, you're going to need to deal with images and websites and how they interact with each other and whatnot, so you might as well do it in models from the outset.
I'm as guilty as anyone for wanting to see immediate results and hack together something quickly, but I always regret it later on, and have to spend more time than I'd expected refactoring it into something usable.
The MVC pattern as used in Mac OS and iOS applications isn't something best explained in an answer box but here's a link to some simple documentation about the roles of Models, Views and Controllers
Some good basic introductions to start with, which also have relevant links to the next stage of documentation are:
Cocoa Core Competencies
Cocoa Application Competencies for iOS
Read these excellent articles first. You'll learn better and faster if you do some basic reading.
I am into designing a new iPhone application. My application is will contain almost all iPhone SDK concepts including core data, server integration, location services. Is there any design decisions I should keep in mind?
My plan was to go by designing a controller class for each iPhone app screen and also any utility classes to be used. Any guidance will be really appreciated.
I forget who said this first, but it goes like this: The first project you do in any new technology will probably be very bad!
This is similar to these sage words from Fred Brooks - "Plan to throw one away; you will anyway"
So the best way is to wade right in, get dirty, light up the dark corners and learn what works for you. Then you'll most likely have some very specific questions based on your experiences!
This is a tough subject to talk about generally. Design approaches that work for some will fail for others.
It would probably help to know more about what you are trying to do. For a counter-example, I'm working on a game. I create an OpenGL context and from that moment on I'm managing assets like shaders, textures, mesh data, sounds,... . The way I've designed my project will pretty much be useless to you.
However the best advice that I can come up is to really figure out what you are trying to do. Create mockups of your GUI and document workflows. Do sketches of GUIs. Become an expert in the domain in which you want your application to work. Develop a deep understanding of what you are trying to do.
Once you have the GUI figured out, start working on the other end of the Model-View-Controller approach - figure out what data you need in order to provide the GUI that you've designed. Not all data structures are equal. What's the best data design for the domain you're working on?
Once you have the view and model figured out you need to glue everything together with controllers. There's lots of trick and traps here. Do you use threading to prevent the GUI from blocking? Do you make direct calls to objects or do you decouple and use notifications?
But this is the public appearance of your application. You might want to track usage data - consider what you wish to track and append that to your design. Errors happen, so think how to approach them.
However, it's hard to be more detailed without more details than what you've provided. Every application has it's own quirks and gotchas. It's nearly impossible to talk about this in a general sense.
I need to implement cover flow in our iphone app. Our app need to display images from server. We already have webservice to return list of pictures. Number of pictures will grow over time to 1000s of pictures.
Here I need your help to decide which library is good for my situation without any memory issues. and any experiences you have in similar scenario.
I appreciate any input you can give in my scenario
Here is list of libraries in mind.
tapkul
OpenFlow
FlowCover
Please help deciding which library to use and
I can't help on the issue of which library is best to use, but be aware apps have been rejected in the past for doing including cover-flow like features.
If you really must include cover-flow functionality, I'd recommend you write a little test app with each of the available libraries and see which fits your requirements the best. You might also try memory profiling the different solutions and see which consumes the least resources.
There probably isn't a "one size fits all" answer to this question, as everyone's requirements will be slightly different.
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I'm wondering if it's realistically possible to learn the iPhone SDK and complete an app by the end of this summer. The app shouldn't be too difficult, it would just interact with my site's API and essentially just fetch, create, and edit resources. I already have a little experience with the SDK (and I'm comfortable with Objective-C), so I'm not completely new to it. Although here I things I don't know how to do and what I'd need to learn:
Log in to my site using basic http authentication and store the user's username/password for all future requests
Implement a toolbar at the bottom to navigate between different views
Fetch and parse xml into list items
Do POST/PUT requests to create/edit a resource on my server
Are there any good resources available to learn how to do those tasks above? Thanks!
You mentioned creating/editing resources on your server. If you're running Ruby on Rails on the backend, you might find Objective Resource interesting, an Objective-C interface into Active Resource:
http://iphoneonrails.com/
But back to your original question, it all depends on how polished you want the app to be. My advice is, ignore if you can do it and just get started learning. Start with the (free) Stanford iTunes U course podcast.
I learned and published in 3 months. The question is are you comfortable with Objective C (which you are) and are you familiar with cocoa and the MVC pattern?
Basically, unless you are totally new to programming, go for it!
I wrote an Android game in two weeks with out knowing Java or the Android API or that much about game programming.. But I had to copy and paste a lot of stuff from documentation examples and other available source code. It is theoretically possible to learn enough to write an iphone app in that time and build it. But it is up to you to focus and see it through, that is the hard part.
Yes - I've even done it.
I had an internship for 2 months last summer and I managed to learn objective-c and create and polish a fairly complex app within that time.
The way I did it was just to throw myself into it. I knew what needed to be done so I jumped into it. I had a quick look at some open source code for various things to see how other people did it then apply those rules to my own code.
2 important things to remember:
Google and stackoverflow are your friend, if your having trouble with something google and stackoverflow will normally have an answer.
Option, Command and double click on something in your code will open up the apple developer documents and do a search for the thing you double clicked on. This gives a really easy way to check for methods and properties in Cocoa classes.
Yes you can.
My suggestion, learn the basics first. Grab a book - I recommend "Beginning iPhone 3 Development" by Jeff LaMarche & David Mark - read most of the chapters (a few of the later ones you can probably leave for another time if you don't need them yet, but do all the earlier ones) and get your head around the essentials. Do the exercises and code as much as possible. There are plenty of learning resources around the internet too.
Then tackle your app while continuing learning. By this point you'll have fallen across & bookmarked a few relevant web links or grabbed a book or two specific to your app's needs, and it should all fall into place.
Good luck! :-)
Yes!
Other than the advice people gave, you can also check out the iPhone Application Programming course on Open Courseware. But, I warn you, it's a 45h course.
Maybe you can spend a week or so to study the Wordpress source ...
I'm doing pretty much the same thing on OSX development. This is how I tackle it:
Buy relevant books. Amazon and SO provide with the right choices, then buy alot of them and see which one fits. I found that having a good book or two and occasionally reading them outside of your programming environment can really enforce you learning proces.
Work through at least one book, the others are for elaborating on what you have learned.
Start writing you app. This can even be after only a mere week of learning the SDK. Start with globally planning the thing, and dividing it in concrete to-do's. Consider every to-do a challenge and tackle accordingly. You will very quickly learn this way.
After a while your knowledge has expanded enough to reflect. When you just started writing the app, you inevitably made some mistakes. Now is the time to fix them and let your experience work its way.
And as previously mentioned, go nuts with google and SO. Of course, posting here proves your ability to use these tools properly. Above all, have fun.
It's possible.
Don't bother investing too many resources into books, especially if you want to save money. Stanford University have put up an excellent series of lectures for free from their iphone course that will get you up to speed with iPhone development, with a few assignments to do on the side (this is good because it offers some structure to your learning)
You can find this on iTunes (it might be reasonable to skip the 'introduction to objective-c' lectures if you're already familiar with the language)
Also it might be worth pointing out that if you want to develop an app on an iPx device you need to get a Developer License which will cost you a bit of money for membership. Although working off the simulator is completely free but doesn't replace trying your app out on a physical device.
ANother suggestions is to look for opesource projects and try to use them as your training exercise. Example:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mtgr8-a3/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mtgr8-jigsaw/
You can get a lot of help from iTunes U. Here is a very recent class which is packed full of useful information.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/advanced-iphone-development-spring-2010/id407243032
There is also a class from Stanford University but I find it moves along slower, but it does cover a lot of material.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/iphone-application-development-winter-2010/id384233225
If you search for "iPhone Application Development" on iTunes you will find other classes as well. I find that these classes, along with all of the available documentation and sample code from Apple, is a great way to learn Objective-C, Xcode and iPhone development.
3 months - full time - sure. Then the next year or so can be spent realising all the little things you did wrong and getting better. But don't let that hold you back, you can certainly do something functional in that time and it's the best way to learn.
I would not start with a book but use iTunes University. The first course available from Stanford was called CS193P Web Page (iTunes link) and it's a great place to start - seeing things done on video is easier for me than reading. More recent classes are also available though they do not publish every semester's class.
How do you design a UI like Facebook?
Is it hard to implement a custom skin into a iphone app? How is it done?
Do I need to follow apple's guideline? What if I don't want to?
How do you design a UI like Facebook?
Facebook's iPhone app appears to be built around using UITableView in various guises. It looks like it adheres to the Apple Human Interface Guidelines.
Is it hard to implement a custom skin
into a iphone app? How is it done?
Skins are just graphic elements that are designed to have their image components swapped out. They are not difficult to implement.
Do I need to follow apple's guideline?
What if I dont want to?
Apple will not penalize you for a non-standard interface. The only interface restrictions are (1) some issues of obscene content and (2) you can't create the illusion that the device itself is broken, has crashed or otherwise failed.
A bit of advice. Don't use non-standard interfaces.
Good interfaces are almost by definition standardized so that users don't have to think about them. Novel interfaces slow users down even if they have no problems otherwise. Just try switching rapidly between Mac, Windows and Linux sometimes. None of the interfaces has major problems per se but having to stop and think how to do something in each particular interface is a pain. You can create the same problem by using a good but non-standard interface within an app.
That is assuming of course that you can actually create a good interface. There are far, far more ways to make bad interfaces than there are to make good ones. Most interfaces fail even those designed by interface gods. The standardized interfaces are the result of tens of thousands of hours of testing and years of experience. You're unlikely to whip out something really new and useful your first time out.
If you try something novel I suggest you mock it up first and then test let people test it without giving them any instruction. You'd be surprised how complex it can get. We used to just make photoshop mockups and then ask test users what they thought each element did or which element they would choose to accomplish a particular task. We were surprised at how poorly our (the developers) perception of the interface overlapped with the perception of the users.
In sum, a novel interface is more likely to hurt your app than help it.
With regard to how to build an app like Facebook, check out Three20. In particular, the TTLauncherView is the class that implements the Springboard-like grid of icons.
3- You don't need to follow the AHIG. But be careful if you don't, because it's very easy to go wrong doing so. Users like to not have to learn anything new. They know the typical Apple software UI, so if you use it, users will know how to use your app as soon as they buy it. If you don't use it, it is important to make sure that the UI is exceedingly easy and intuitive, and looks good to an iPhone user's eyes (and fingers).