Jeffrey Sambells

Inconsistency

Fri, 07 Nov 2014 10:04:54 -0500

I don’t know how may times I’ve heard companies say “Our apps need to look consistent across all platforms” which usually means pixel perfect precision from one app to the next. If you think the same then realize what you are actually saying is “Our app needs to look wrong on every platform.”

Think about it, consistency isn’t about making your app look the same everywhere. How often do you use the same app across multiple platforms and devices? I would guess never. Normal users don’t do that. They use one device on one platform so consistency across platforms is irrelevant.

If you want consistency, be consistent with the platform, not the apps¹.

This is a big factor in my disdain for cross compiler tools that allow you to develop in one language and distribute across multiple platforms. With the exception of immersive games, you might be saving person hours by building to the losets common denominator but at what cost to the end user experience? ↩

Swift Command Line

Wed, 18 Jun 2014 13:29:52 -0400

This is going to be fun…

⚡ sudo xcode-select --switch /Applications/Xcode6-Beta.app/Contents/Developer/

⚡ xcrun swift

Welcome to Swift!  Type :help for assistance.
	1> :help

The Swift REPL (Read-Eval-Print-Loop) acts like an interpreter.  Valid statements, expressions, and declarations are immediately compiled and executed.

The complete set of LLDB
debugging commands are also available as described below.  Commands must be prefixed with a colon at the REPL prompt (:quit for example.)  Typing just a colon followed by return
will switch to the LLDB prompt.


Debugger commands:

_regexp-attach    -- Attach to a process id if in decimal, otherwise treat the argument as a process name to attach to.
_regexp-break     -- Set a breakpoint using a regular expression to specify the location, where <linenum> is in decimal and <address> is in hex.
_regexp-bt        -- Show a backtrace.  An optional argument is accepted; if that argument is a number, it specifies the number of frames to display.  If that argument is 'all',
										 full backtraces of all threads are displayed.
_regexp-display   -- Add an expression evaluation stop-hook.
_regexp-down      -- Go down "n" frames in the stack (1 frame by default).
_regexp-env       -- Implements a shortcut to viewing and setting environment variables.
_regexp-jump      -- Sets the program counter to a new address.
_regexp-list      -- Implements the GDB 'list' command in all of its forms except FILE:FUNCTION and maps them to the appropriate 'source list' commands.
_regexp-tbreak    -- Set a one shot breakpoint using a regular expression to specify the location, where <linenum> is in decimal and <address> is in hex.
_regexp-undisplay -- Remove an expression evaluation stop-hook.
_regexp-up        -- Go up "n" frames in the stack (1 frame by default).
ad                -- 
apropos           -- Find a list of debugger commands related to a particular word/subject.
breakpoint        -- A set of commands for operating on breakpoints. Also see _regexp-break.
command           -- A set of commands for managing or customizing the debugger commands.
disassemble       -- Disassemble bytes in the current function, or elsewhere in the executable program as specified by the user.
expression        -- Evaluate a C/ObjC/C++ expression in the current program context, using user defined variables and variables currently in scope.
frame             -- A set of commands for operating on the current thread's frames.
gdb-remote        -- Connect to a remote GDB server.  If no hostname is provided, localhost is assumed.
gui               -- Switch into the curses based GUI mode.
help              -- Show a list of all debugger commands, or give details about specific commands.
kdp-remote        -- Connect to a remote KDP server.  udp port 41139 is the default port number.
log               -- A set of commands for operating on logs.
memory            -- A set of commands for operating on memory.
platform          -- A set of commands to manage and create platforms.
plugin            -- A set of commands for managing or customizing plugin commands.
process           -- A set of commands for operating on a process.
quit              -- Quit out of the LLDB debugger.
rd                -- 
register          -- A set of commands to access thread registers.
script            -- Pass an expression to the script interpreter for evaluation and return the results. Drop into the interactive interpreter if no expression is given.
settings          -- A set of commands for manipulating internal settable debugger variables.
source            -- A set of commands for accessing source file information
target            -- A set of commands for operating on debugger targets.
thread            -- A set of commands for operating on one or more threads within a running process.
type              -- A set of commands for operating on the type system
version           -- Show version of LLDB debugger.
watchpoint        -- A set of commands for operating on watchpoints.

Current user-defined commands:

bmessage    -- Run Python function __FBDebugCommands_bmessage
border      -- Run Python function __FBDisplayCommands_border
caflush     -- Run Python function __FBDisplayCommands_caflush
fa11y       -- Run Python function __FBFindCommands_fa11y
flicker     -- Run Python function __FBFlickerCommands_flicker
fv          -- Run Python function __FBFindCommands_fv
fvc         -- Run Python function __FBFindCommands_fvc
hide        -- Run Python function __FBDisplayCommands_hide
mask        -- Run Python function __FBDisplayCommands_mask
panim       -- Run Python function __FBPrintCommands_panim
pca         -- Run Python function __FBPrintCommands_pca
pcells      -- Run Python function __FBPrintCommands_pcells
pclass      -- Run Python function __FBPrintCommands_pclass
pinternals  -- Run Python function __FBPrintCommands_pinternals
pinvocation -- Run Python function __FBInvocationCommands_pinvocation
pivar       -- Run Python function __FBPrintCommands_pivar
presponder  -- Run Python function __FBPrintCommands_presponder
ptv         -- Run Python function __FBPrintCommands_ptv
pvc         -- Run Python function __FBPrintCommands_pvc
pviews      -- Run Python function __FBPrintCommands_pviews
show        -- Run Python function __FBDisplayCommands_show
taplog      -- Run Python function __FBFindCommands_taplog
unborder    -- Run Python function __FBDisplayCommands_unborder
unmask      -- Run Python function __FBDisplayCommands_unmask
visualize   -- Run Python function __FBVisualizationCommands_visualize
vs          -- Run Python function __FBFlickerCommands_vs
wivar       -- Run Python function __FBDebugCommands_wivar

For more information on any command, type ':help <command-name>'.
	1>

Hrm… what now?

iOS Photography

Thu, 08 May 2014 21:03:58 -0400

I keep telling my wife I want to get a new DSLR (my Nikon D40 is getting a little dated) but really, I rarely use it. My goto camera is my iPhone simply because of convenience. I’m always using my iPhone for pretty much everything and really, it’s pretty great. Throw in some apps and you can see the real power of that camera in your pocket as Dan Rubin, the editor of the Photographic Journal shows us here.

A look inside apps

Mon, 21 Apr 2014 22:51:57 -0400

I admire people who take the time to detail how their apps are made behind the scenes. I’ve been meaning to do the same with my apps which is why I created my ScreenLapse app. While you wait for me to post my own, here’s a few example of the design and processes behind some great apps.

How to Make a Vesper: Design – Looks at the design behind behind Q Branch’s iOS 7 esq app before iOS was out.
Bilding Paper - A look at Facebook’s Paper app and how some of the animations and interaction details were created. The POP tool looks great (also, I really have to sit down and learn Quartz Composer and Origami.
Design Process: Units Convert 2 – Aleksandar Vacić shares some of the feedback he got directly from Apple durring one of the tech tours and how he applied that to the updates in Convert 2.
Improve the payment experience with animations: Behind the scenes of Stripe Checkout – A quick look at using animations in Stripe to provide a better user experience.
The design decisions behind the tech industry’s beloved anonymous Secret app
Three Brilliant UI Details in Carousel, Dropbox’s New Photo App

Update:

Here’s another: The making of Findings.

OS X Helvetica Neue

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 22:12:49 -0400

Craig Hockenberry thinks that Lucida Grande is going to be kicked to the curb come June and we’ll see Helvetica Neue as the new OS X system font. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is true so it’s probably a good idea to check your OS X apps to see what they may look like with the Helvetica Neue font metrics. Craig has created a NSFont category to go just that.

Custom Clang Analyzer

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 21:38:08 -0400

Awesome idea from Keith Harrison about getting the most out of your Build & Analyze workflow by using the latest open source updates of the clang analyzer–directly in Xcode! It only takes a second to download and install so there’s no reason not to. You can check out his post for more details or just open up your terminal and copy in this:

curl -o checker-276.tar.bz2 http://clang-analyzer.llvm.org/downloads/checker-276.tar.bz2;
bunzip2 checker-276.tar.bz2;
tar -xfv checker-276.tar;
mv checker-276 /Application/ClangAnalyzer;
rm checker-276.tar
cd /Applications/ClangAnalyzer   sudo ./set-xcode-analyzer --use-checker-build=/Applications/ClangAnalyzer

** NOTE: Quit Xcode first.

Follow along with the clang analyzer release notes and repeat as needed.

Colour Pickers

Thu, 17 Apr 2014 13:13:00 -0400

Did you know that the OS X colour picker has a plugin framework? If not, I suggest you add these great colour pickers to your system-wide colour panel.

Panic’s Developer Color Picker

Panic’s Developer Color Picker is a custom color picker designed specifically for developers. Makes getting colors out of Photoshop/Acorn mock-ups quick and easy. Currently supports NSColor, UIColor, CGColorRef, CSS and HTML styles.

Jesper’s Hex Color Picker

Hex Color Picker lets you edit and view hexadecimal color codes in the standard Mac OS X color panel.

Skala Color

Skala Color is a compact and feature-rich OS X color picker that works with a huge variety of formats, covering everything you’re likely to need for web, iOS, Android, and OS X development — Hex, CSS RGBA, CSS HSLA, UIColor, NSColor and more. It also automatically recognises colors copied to the clipboard, presenting them as a swatch that can be applied with a single click. The hue and opacity sliders let you quickly target rough values, then fine tune with 4× the precision.

Tweaks

Tue, 25 Mar 2014 23:23:34 -0400

I’ll admit I’m personally not a big user of Facebook’s social network but they do have a lot of great open source iOS developer tools. Recently I’ve been playing with KVOController, origami, and Shimmer, all of which are great. Today, Facebook added another awesome dev tool called Tweaks.

Tweaks gives us an interface to manage and “tweak” parameters directly inside a running app, letting you to experiment interactively with settings such as colours or animation speeds. Facebook used it themselves to perfect their highly praised Paper app by allow non-developer to contribute to the design experience.

From the Tweaks project’s page:

Occasionally, it’s perfect the first try. Sometimes, the idea doesn’t work at all. But often, it just needs a few minor adjustments. That last case is where Tweaks fits in. Tweaks makes those small adjustments easy: with no code changes and no computer, you can try out different options and decide which works best.

Some of the most useful parameters to adjust are animation timings, velocity thresholds, colors, and physics constants. At Facebook, we also use tweaks to temporarily disable new features during development. That way, the designers and engineers involved can enable it on just their devices, without getting in the way of others testing the app.

I’m excited to try out Tweaks in the apps I’m currently working on. It looks like a great way for client to tweak the app themselves so they can finally decide which shade of blue is perfect. Download it here or use Tweaks in your Podfile.

Dismissing a Modal View Using a Storyboard Segue

Wed, 19 Feb 2014 21:54:07 -0500

I really like Xcode storyboards even though they can be a pain to merge if you have multiple people editing them at once. I find them a great way to kickstart and prototype an app. I love to layout the flow of the entire app, visualizing all my controllers and their interconnections. The storyboard creates a nice visualization of how the app works and in many cases it will compile and run the basics without any additional code.

The one problem I have with storyboards is dealing with Modal views. When a view is presented as a modal window, it requires some way to dismiss that window when you’re done. Often, the modal view is embedded in a navigation controller with a “Done” bar button item. Something like this:

Now, the problem is the “Done” button. The button needs to call the dismissViewControllerAnimated:completion: selector on the presenting view controller. That means we need an outlet to connect the button, which in turn means we need a custom controller or something.

Instead, I like to use a segue. The custom segue simply dismisses the source view controller and, as a bonus, improves the visualization in the storyboard to indicate which view the done button will reveal.

First, create a custom UIStoryboardSegue that dismisses the source view controller like so:

DismissSegue.h:

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface DismissSegue : UIStoryboardSegue

@end

DismissSegue.m:

#import "DismissSegue.h"

@implementation DismissSegue

- (void)perform {
    UIViewController *sourceViewController = self.sourceViewController;
    [sourceViewController.presentingViewController dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:nil];
}

@end

Now, create a modal segue starting from the “Done” button and ending with the original presenting view controller. You’ll notice that there is now a “dismiss” option in the modal segue types.

It doesn’t really matter where the endpoint of the segue is because all the segue does is dismiss the source view controller, it doesn’t present anything new. If you want, you could even connect the done button to the same controller it’s inside. I like to connect it to the original source of the modal presentation so that the storyboard gives a nice circular indication where the application flow goes when the view is dismissed.

You can try the above example using the GitHub project here.

iOS & Objective-C Video Resources

Wed, 12 Feb 2014 18:35:45 -0500

If you’re looking for some great video tutorials for Objective-C, here’s some great resources that I use daily:

NSSccreencast – is a paid resources by Ben Scheirman that releases weekly iOS development screencasts. There’s a few free samples that you can try out but I highly recommend the paid videos. They’re short enough to consume over a lunch but pack full of useful information and examples.
raywenderlich.com videos – is a relatively new source of video tutorials that is currently in beta. They cover a lot of the most common things you’ll come across when working with iOS and UIKit.
Apple Programming – is a YouTube channel focused on Mac OSX development. A lot of info applies to iOS as well.
Developing iOS 7 apps – is an online course from Stanford University that will take some time to go though but it has been updated to cover most aspects of iOS 7 development.
And lastly, WWDC Videos. Tons of good stuff there.