Issue 263

Comment

What's that? It's Thursday? Yes. After five years I've decided to try a change to when I publish. What will I think of next! 😆

Happy Thursday! 🎉

News

Simplified Screenshot Submission Process

This is unexpected! No more creating hundreds of screenshots, unless you want to. You can now specify one set of device images & preview video and have them displayed for all devices and localisations. However just because you can doesn't mean you necessarily should and I'd still strongly recommend localising screenshots if your app is also localised.

Interface Builder is much less likely to modify documents on open

Let's ignore for a moment the "much less likely" wording in this 😄 and take a second to celebrate this change in Xcode 8 beta 5! I have a special commit message for those spurious changes to XIB/storyboard files, it is simply "Oh Xcode..." and I hope I never have to type it again.

Code

Complex table view state changes made easy

Kersten Broich & Justus Kandzi with an interesting article on using a single table view controller to manage the UI for three states of a signup/register/login view. This might seem like a dubious idea at first but their method makes it pretty simple, and the resulting transitions between states are beautiful.

Using Stack Views in Table Cells

It's table view week this week! This article by Tom Harrington covers using a stack view inside a table view cell to expand/collapse when tapped. I think you need to be careful with usability when using expanding cells, but there's certainly a case for them and stack views with this method make them much easier to code.

How do I build a Network Layer

Tomasz Szulc on building network architecture that isn't dependent on any third party libraries, or any Apple provided libraries like Core Data and which is easily extensible and testable. There's also a reference implementation on GitHub too. I like the design.

How To Create an Uber Splash Screen

Whether you like the idea of splash screens or not, there's no denying that the animation in the new (ish) uber redesign is beautiful. Derek Selander breaks the animation down into its component parts and then rebuilds them from scratch.

macOS Development

Mac Developers Survey Results

Interesting survey on the business of the Mac App Store, based on a sample of around 700 Mac developers. I've no reason to doubt any of the results here, but do bear in mind that this research was done by a company that runs an alternative Mac app distribution service.

Design

Stop designing interfaces, Start designing experiences

It's true that you need to consider each mobile platform's conventions and design guidelines when building your apps, but how much variation is actually necessary? Nicolas Duval argues against platform specific designs and advocates for a common set of UI components that look slightly different on each platform, but are essentially the same. He even goes as far as to say "No exceptions", arguing that they will ultimately lead to disaster through inconsistency.

Business and Marketing

How to get featured on the App Store

Dan Counsell with an updated version of his excellent guide to increasing your chances of getting featured on the App Store. The book contains a solid set of steps to give you the best chance of seeing your app on that top banner. 💸

And finally...

Make GitHub great again

git commit -m "Honestly this is a tremendous commit message. I've been tremendously successful when committing code with this message."

Issue 263 August 11th 2016