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iOS Development Tips If You're Just starting Out

stuartkhall.com

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Re: iOS Development Tips If You're Just starting Out

#71

Post by kalms »

danilocampos wrote: post #59
sandofsky wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all the teams I've worked on, designers have worked out pixel positions and text alignment by the time I see the mocks. I don't find much value in realtime feedback. Nibs are handy if you're sticking to stock UI and stock behavior. Programmatic layout takes longer to setup the boilerplate, but once it's in place, I find it about as easy to work in code as nibs. With complex designs, I find it significantly easier…

> In all the teams I've worked on, designers have worked out pixel positions and text alignment by the time I see the mocks. I don't find much value in realtime feedback. Very few beginner iOS developers will have a design team at their beck and call.

But some of us are both ;)

Re: iOS Development Tips If You're Just starting Out

#72

Post by objclxt »

MaxGabriel wrote: post #24
morganb180 wrote: post #17

Thanks - as it happens I'm about 3 months in to learning Objective-c and iOS development. This is super helpful, as many of the tutorials online are dated. Right now I'm working through the Ray Wenderlich stuff which is really good, at least as far as I can tell. w/r/t using the visual XIB/Storyboard interface vs. coding the views, I've found early on that while the nibs and storyboards make it easy to prototype and…

Eh, I wouldn't be so sure. I remember from the WWDC 2012 presentation that the iPhoto team talks about how they used xibs in their workflow, and iPhoto is an extremely impressive app. There's also the fact that you can do alot of setup with a xib or storyboard, and then do relational layout programmatically.

iPhoto is an interesting one: the layout is done programatically, but the xibs are used to load the images. For example, the brush panel is all animated and arranged in code, but xibs are used to hold the brush PNG images since it reduces the code burden (of manually creating the UIImageViews, etc etc).

Re: iOS Development Tips If You're Just starting Out

#74

Post by makmanalp »

danilocampos wrote: post #22

As long as the beginners are drifting by, lemme say this: Every nib you use is a boatload of code you don't have to maintain. Use nibs. Can they solve every problem? Goodness no. But they're a great way to get the basics of your views laid out. They give you an easy way to preview the behavior of your view when layout changes. And they're very forgiving when you change your mind. Changing text alignment? One click. W…

These used to be binary and so they'd not play well with version control. Is this fixed?

Re: iOS Development Tips If You're Just starting Out

#75

Post by reidmain »

makmanalp wrote: post #74
danilocampos wrote: post #22

As long as the beginners are drifting by, lemme say this: Every nib you use is a boatload of code you don't have to maintain. Use nibs. Can they solve every problem? Goodness no. But they're a great way to get the basics of your views laid out. They give you an easy way to preview the behavior of your view when layout changes. And they're very forgiving when you change your mind. Changing text alignment? One click. W…

These used to be binary and so they'd not play well with version control. Is this fixed?

They are XML now but they are so volatile that merging is still a pain in the ass.

Re: iOS Development Tips If You're Just starting Out

#76

Post by reidmain »

jsankey wrote: post #4
kevingibbon wrote: post #2

Utilizing storyboards and xibs is one of the best way to decrease development time. Stop the coding madness!!!! The only people I still know that avoid heavy utilization of these do not understand how to properly use them. Go learn!

I started out using XIBs, but also found myself moving a lot of my controllers away from them as soon as things got non-trivial. The biggest problem I found was weak layout support, so if you had a lot of dynamic content in a screen, it was easier to make a flexible layout in code. I also agree that the lack of "diffability" for XIBs, despite them being XML, is a pain. Maybe I was missing something, but my experience…

I'm 100% with you. I used nibs a lot when I started out but now I've slowly drifted away from them. The only thing I use them for is setting the frame so I can get a general idea of the layout of the view. Sometimes I'll set a few properties like text color and font size but I'll then move those lines into viewDidLoad: so I know exactly what my view will be like when it is loaded.

I've dealt with far too many bugs involving Interface Builder and it's random changes and "upgrading" the second I touch a nib that it's more of a liability now.

People who say it's less "code" are just delusional. Setting the font in IB versus a single line in viewDidLoad: doesn't save you anything. At some point in time that line of code is getting executed and you will at some point have to maintain it.

Re: iOS Development Tips If You're Just starting Out

#77

Post by josephlord »

MehdiEG wrote: post #70
MehdiEG wrote: post #57

A surprisingly good list. Beyond the xib issue, which other have talked about, I would add a couple of points: - If developing a trivial utility app you're expecting to release quickly, target iOS version N-1. Any user who is more that one major iOS version behind won't be the type of user who will download your app (or any app really). If developing anything more ambitious, target the latest iOS version only and tak…

One last tip that bit us hard: beware of universal apps (apps designed for both iPhone and iPad). Once you've published your app as universal, there is no way back. You can't decide in a subsequent update to revert to an iPhone-only or iPad-only app - Apple won't let you. So if you start with an iPhone app, and then put together an iPad version of the UI just to try out and publish it as a universal app, you'll be st…

Interesting point.

You also won't be able to charge different prices for the iPad and iPhone versions either. Although you probably could make separate in-app purchases that get offered based on device type.

Re: iOS Development Tips If You're Just starting Out

#78

Post by morganb180 »

MaxGabriel wrote: post #24
morganb180 wrote: post #17

Thanks - as it happens I'm about 3 months in to learning Objective-c and iOS development. This is super helpful, as many of the tutorials online are dated. Right now I'm working through the Ray Wenderlich stuff which is really good, at least as far as I can tell. w/r/t using the visual XIB/Storyboard interface vs. coding the views, I've found early on that while the nibs and storyboards make it easy to prototype and…

Eh, I wouldn't be so sure. I remember from the WWDC 2012 presentation that the iPhoto team talks about how they used xibs in their workflow, and iPhoto is an extremely impressive app. There's also the fact that you can do alot of setup with a xib or storyboard, and then do relational layout programmatically.

Cool, thanks for the insight Max. Like I said, I have a ton to learn. Will definitely dig in more on this. But you're right, iPhoto is really well done.

Re: iOS Development Tips If You're Just starting Out

#79

Post by bennyg »

xedarius wrote: post #45

I've been programming iOS for a couple of years now and some of those tips where useful to me! Anyhow as we're contributing top tips, my one is 'Always run your app on target hardware.' Don't rely on the emulators, especially if your're doing OpenGL work. You will only know your framerate by running your app/game on the real hardware.

This is huge.

Running on the emulator is good if you haven't paid the $100 to put it on device yet. After that, you better be running on your device every time. There's so much to be said for actually holding the device and using your app like your normally would, instead of pointing and clicking with a mouse. Even the pixels and text-size/color are WAY different when on the device. Seriously, do this if you aren't already.

Re: iOS Development Tips If You're Just starting Out

#80

Post by coob »

rogerbinns wrote: post #33
cageface wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AppCode is brilliant. Best $99 I ever spent on a development tool. It's worth it for the refactoring and #import management alone.

> It's worth it for the refactoring and #import management alone. That is something Eclipse does out of the box! Apple really disappointed me with Xcode - it is actually less usable than Eclipse in my experience. This is not praise of Eclipse - it has many issues!

Xcode has refactoring support.
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