December 2009
21 posts
5 tags
Fluid as Xcode Documentation Viewer
A standalone Documentation Viewer for Xcode with tabs, bitches.
The Fluid part was easy. But every tab looked like this:
“Oh, C’mon!” …the redundant “iPhone Dev Center: ” was wasting my precious tab real estate. Fortunately they’re just HTML, albeit hidden away inside a bundle.
Enter TextWrangler. It’s free, it’s awesome. I buy BBEdit,...
3 tags
Google Toolbox For Mac Xcode Plugin
If you use git with Xcode, you quickly realize Xcode has a habit of inserting trailing whitespace (e.g. spaces or tabs before the end of line.) Git complains about trailing whitespaces.
So go grab http://bit.ly/GTMXcodePlugin to remove trailing whitespace (adds “Correct Whitespace On Save” option to preference pane.)
Oh, and it helps with unit testing. But for now I’m glad to...
Use UIHardware
phonedev:
Don’t assume that the size of the screen is 320x480 (who’s to say that the next version of the iPhone won’t have a 480x640 screen?) Also the status bar can be more than 20 pixels high (like during a phone call.)
Do this:
CGRect contentRect = [UIHardware fullScreenApplicationContentRect];
UINavigationBar *navigationBar = [[[UINavigationBar alloc]...
3 tags
Parse a Rails timestamp in Cocoa
A quick snippet to parse a timestamp string that might be emitted from a Rails application.
Cocoa is very good at producing human-readable dates according to a user’s preferences and locale, but I was not impressed with the default parsing. And the documentation from Apple doesn’t come out and list the format rules. I was going to resort to class-dumping NSDateTimeFormatter but...
Let's DISQUS
I’m going to try enabling DISQUS so people can comment on my posts. By default Tumblr doesn’t allow comments. Let’s see how this works.
3 tags
Notes on Mastering OpenGL ES for iPhone
Continuing my iPhone Tech Talks Toronto notes with “Part One” of Allan Schaffer’s talk, Mastering OpenGL ES for iPhone. Schaffer is the Graphics Technology Evangelist at Apple.
Side note: if you’re not familiar with Jeff LaMarche’s excellent OpenGL ES From the Ground Up series on his blog, bookmark it now.
Schaffer opened the talk with a high level overview.
...
1 tag
git: revert (reset) a single file →
“If you have an uncommitted change (its only in your working copy) that you wish to revert (in SVN terms) to the copy in your latest commit, do the following:
git checkout filename
This will checkout the file from HEAD, overwriting your change.
The rest of the Internet will tell you to use git reset --hard, but this resets all uncommitted changes you’ve made in your working copy. Type...
2 tags
Keep Drobo from sleeping
My Drobo keeps falling asleep. It’s not in standby mode, but whenever Snow Leopard opens a file dialog, there is this huge pause while the drives in the Drobo spin up. I’m blocked. I listen to the four drives spin up and click into action. Then, finally, I’m allowed to use the file dialog. The process repeats throughout the day.
So here’s what I’m going to try. A...
2 tags
Running Apple sample code on your device
Just a quick note about getting Apple sample code (or other people’s examples in general) to run on your device. Let’s take LazyTableImages as an example.
I’ll assume when you write and build your own code, it works fine. Starting new projects in Xcode from scratch usually results in something that will run on your device.
There is a nice summary of things to check if nothing...
2 tags
Where to find Xcode Screenshots
I love screen captures. But where are Xcode Screenshots saved?
~/Library/Application Support/Developer/Shared/Xcode/Screenshots
From Finder, you can shift-command-G and paste that path
You can also drag screenshots from the Xcode Organizer to your desktop.
In preparation for my UI review, I took iPhone screenshots of the website I was working from. Then I simply swiped through the camera roll...
Notes on Effective iPhone App Development
Senior Apple Engineer Larry Coopet spoke on Effective iPhone App Development at the Toronto iPhone Tech Talks.
I attended the “Part Two” of this talk after Eric Hope’s iPhone User Interface Design Essentials.
And I took some notes.
“Did you know we have a single function call that does that for you already?”
Coopet opened with a story of a developer who had...
1 tag
Undocumented rgb2565 options
A quick note for Android hackers. If you’ve tried to customize the “boot image” displayed when you first power on an Android device, you’ve probably used the rgb2565 command-line tool at some point.
Out of curiosity, I checked the source, available from android.git.kernel.org. It’s pretty short and sweet. There are two undocumented options:
int main(int argc, char...
Notes sur le iPhone Tech Talk Toronto (en...
Found on Twitter: iPhone Tech Talk Toronto - par Christian Legault “Je me suis déplacé de Québec à Toronto pour le “iPhone Tech Talk World Tour” cette année, et j’ai pris des notes!” I overheard more French at the tech talk in one day than I have in a very long time. There was in iPhone Tech Talk in Beijing on the same day, which makes me wonder what Mandarin-speaking staff Apple employs. Or was...
2 tags
Does OAuth make sense for iPhone clients?
Ben Gottleib doesn’t think so. For web services you don’t trust, maybe. But “If the user doesn’t want you using their credentials, they can simply not launch or delete you.” (I had asked him about this after the Chicago CocoaHeads meeting last Tuesday.) I find this ironic since I am using his Twitter+OAuth Source and Example for iPhone.
I also stayed up late one evening with Karl...
2 tags
Jeff LaMarche on iPhone Tech Talks NYC →
iPhone and Mac technical author Jeff LaMarche writes, “It was a truly great event. I would have gladly paid to attend; the fact that Apple did this for us for free is somewhat mind-boggling to me.” If you don’t already follow @jeff_lamarche and subscribe to his blog, you should.
2 tags
2008 iPhone Tech Talks Videos (ADC on iTunes) →
Here’s a link to the videos from last years iPhone Tech Talks. You’ll need to log into your Apple Developer account to reach the link. If that link is too deep, then start with ADC on iTunes
1 tag
Notes on High Fidelity UI
My last batch of notes from Eric Hope’s talk on iPhone User Interface Design Essentials from the Toronto Tech Talk.
A High Fidelity user interface : “Most are not white lists.”
(Bummer. My initial iPhone application design is…)
“Make it iPhone-like.”
Apple has put all of their user interface design secrets into a single document, which is available...
1 tag
Notes on Layout and Icons.
Some more notes from Eric Hope’s talk on iPhone User Interface Design Essentials from the Toronto Tech Talk.
If a screen is shared—there is more than one path to reach it—then use a modal view. (e.g. Compose view in Mail.) Do not follow the web model. Do not use breadcrumbs. Do not use ”Home” button. “If your application is responsive enough, users won’t mind...
1 tag
Notes on App Style
This continues my notes from the iPhone Tech Talk in Toronto this year.
As you can see from my notebook, I signed up to meet with Eric Hope for a UI design audit for my next iPhone application. With this in mind, I sat in the front row and paid close attention to what Hope had to say about iPhone User Interface Design Essentials.
I had already read the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines, the...
1 tag
iPhone Tech Talk Toronto
So I drove to Toronto from Chicago for the iPhone Tech Talk this year.
I took some notes.
The iPhone Tech Talk Kickoff was led by John Geleynse, Director of Technology Evangelism & User Experience Evangelist.
400 people were invited to the Toronto Tech Talk.
All evangelists are Software Engineers. John introduced the speakers.
Videos from one of the Tech Talks will be available in a...