Issue 14

4^th November 2011

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

Every week I think I won’t have enough links to put this together but every week my pinboard bookmarks prove me wrong!

Dave Verwer

News

Check the beta 5.0.1 PDF file available in the developer portal for the low down but this looks like a good solution to the “Cleaning…” problem that I linked to two weeks ago. Great work by Apple for turning this around so quickly.

I am sure you are all well aware of iDeveloper Live (previously the Mac Developer Network) podcast from the inimitable Scotty and John Fox but I have been meaning to give it a link here for a while just in case it had passed you by and this week’s episode is a cracker with a guest appearance by Bill Dudney so it seemed a good time to link to it. The segment on ImageIO is particularly essential listening but every episode is worth a listen.

Tools

Stewart Gleadow continues his look at automated testing tools for iOS apps. I am not going to link to every post he has made this week on this subject but if this interests you then I would suggest exploring his site a little more.

Great to see iOS 5 bringing parity between fonts available to the iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch and Apple published this definitive list of fonts on iOS this week.

However, I actually prefer this list as it includes previews and has been regularly updated since at least iOS 3.

Ole Begemann with a review of CodeRunner by Nikolai Krill. This has to be the easiest way to quickly execute a snippet of Objective-C code.

Code

Ray Wenderlich’s site is on fire at the moment with his series of iOS 5 posts, the iOS feast. This week Cesare Rocchi tackles iCloud.

Keith Harrison on the (almost) undocumented radio group PS specifier in iOS 5. For small groups of options this looks like a winner.

Interesting component from Peter Steinberger which reproduces the stacking view controller UI used in Twitter for iPad.

I am not a fan of large frameworks like this but I thought this was worth linking as they seem to be taking a very stability focused approach which will hopefully keep from going the way of Three20. I would strongly advise to treat frameworks like this with plenty of caution though.

Design

Matt Gemmell with some thoughtful words on really thinking about how a UI control gets its information and purpose across effectively using the lowly on/off switch element in iOS, Mac OS X and 3rd party apps as an example.

I really love browsing through UI mockups of apps that progress through development, such a great source of inspiration and insight into someones design process. Matt Gemmell (again!) generously shares some iterations on mockups while designing the new version of his Favourites app for iOS.

Great domain name for another site which showcases good quality iOS design. Unlike the last couple of sites like this that I have linked to, iOS inspires me focuses not only on app UI but also icons, websites and various other resources.

Business and Marketing

What a great idea from Dave Addey. I also have to say I love that this single tweet (and link) gets across everything that might have taken 500 words in a blog post.

Fraser Speirs with a round up of interesting examples of pushing iOS beyond what you might have thought possible, in some cases beyond even what is possible on a Mac. Posts like this remind me why I love this platform so much.