Issue 323

20^th October 2017

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

We’re only a week away from iPhone X preorders! Are you ready? If you’re planning on upgrading, make sure to mark down the 27th of October in your calendar (I know I definitely am) and get those clicking (or tapping) fingers warmed up. 🤞

<p>Vicc Alexander</p>

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News

Although it’s only been a month since the official debut of Swift 4.0, Apple has already begun focusing its efforts on 4.1. With an estimated release date set sometime in Spring 2018, we should expect a few minor updates that will hopefully move us forward into Swift 5. 😆

Well here’s a nice surprise. If you enjoy conferences and want to learn more about mobile development, you’re going to love this. Awesome Mobile Conferences is a collaborative list of more than 40 upcoming events taking place all over the world. You can also download their free mobile apps to stay up to date. 🏆

Tools

A very well-thought-out piece on the reality behind the show blame line feature in Xcode, and all the negative connations that come with it. I don’t want to spoil it, but it definitely touches on a lot of key points that hit close to home for me. Having taught myself how to code mostly on my own, I always had this lingering fear that my code would never be good enough. The last thing I needed would have been for someone to point out all the flaws and mistakes in a negative and non-constructive way.

Code

If you’ve been holding out on open-sourcing code, now may be a good a time as any to give it a shot. Looking back, open-sourcing Chameleon might have been one of the best things I could have done for my coding ability. Not only did it force me to approach it in a more thoughtful manner, but it also helped improve my communication and teamwork skills.

I highly recommend bookmarking this post/checklist of tips and tricks on how to think about open-source, what to open-source, and some of the most common practices to help get you started. Similar to traveling alone, this is one of those things I urge people to try out at least once. 🙂

Most of the time someone brings up iOS architectures, debates about which is better tend to break out. The reality is that each approach has its own pros and cons. Understanding how and when to use one is what matters most. Luis takes us on a nice journey through some of the most popular architectures and introduces us to what he describes as a state container-based approach. In addition to covering use cases, examples, implementations, and testing, he also dwells into its drawbacks and provides us with a well-thought-out conclusion. Although lengthy, it’s extremely informative.

Two of the most common reasons I’ve heard for why developers skip out on implementing animations: 1) They take too long to get right 2) Complex animations end up creating tons of nested closures and code clutter.

ViewAnimator aims to solve both of these scenarios with as little as one line of code. Based on the readme, this library seems to provide a nice range of out-of-the-box animations for views including those with more complex subviews. Good stuff.

Whether you’re building a social network, food app, or a utility, chances are you’ll be using a webview to link to something on your website… no biggie. However, if you’re using dynamic type in your app, you’ll surely want your webviews to conform to it as well. Here’s Keith with some great examples on how to accomplish this by adopting dynamic type in your webviews to keep them in sync with the rest of your app. 😎

Design

One of my favorite blogs from a few years back was Subjective- C, which studied innovative interfaces for iOS. Although it has since been abandoned, it has always been refreshing to see others find new and interesting ways to add functionality into their apps. Well, Savannah Reising doesn’t disappoint. Absolutely enjoyed reading the detailed thought process and unique approach that went into building this out. Oh and 👍 for thinking about user privacy.

Really interesting points raised here. I still recall most apps back in 2010. They were literally mobile web pages embedded within native controllers. Although we’ve come a long way from simply duplicating desktop experiences onto mobile and calling it a day, there’s still room for innovation as Apple continues to develop faster and smarter devices. One of the things I’m looking forward to the most is how developers will use AR to solve old problems in new ways (we’ve already seen tons of amazing creations such as AR measuring tools, and more. Exciting stuff.

And finally...

Because every font has a time & place… 😂