Sponsored Link
Save 50% during WWDC!
Hacking with Swift's annual WWDC sale is back for another year, giving you great books with lifetime Swift updates at half price! Whether you're looking for Swift design patterns, Vapor 3, advanced techniques, or more, there's guaranteed to be something for you. Find out more.
hackingwithswift.com
News
ClassKit Released with iOS 11.4 and Xcode 9.4
We first heard about ClassKit at the education event in March and it was unusual to hear about a new official framework debut outside of the annual release cycle. Just two short months later and here it is! There's documentation, including information on how to test with it if don't have a managed Apple ID. I'm happy to see this!
apple.com
Apple Silently Launched Creative Testing in App Store Search Ads
I almost missed this, but it seems like quite an important feature for the App Store shipped this week. With all these things shipping less than a week before WWDC, who knows what the news will be on Monday! Creative Sets are not quite A/B testing for your App Store listing but if you use App Store advertising, well... I can't summarise it here in one paragraph so go read this article by Moritz Daan.
asostack.com
WWDC
WWDC 97 Videos
Want something to watch on the flight to San Jose this weekend? These are fantastic. 🥇
bslabs.net
Tools
Hacking my shell prompt so I make less mistakes
Nice tip from Marc Palmer on including various information in your terminal prompt. I don't go as far as the Xcode version (which is something I hadn't seen before) but I do find it essential to include my git branch and clean/dirty status next to the path.
marcpalmer.net
Code
Standardising icons, images and placeholders on iOS
Displaying downloaded images in an iOS app is probably something you've had to deal with as a developer. The UI is more complex than it first appears with the image view needing states for a placeholder, showing progress or a spinner, download failures and of course the image itself. Michael Waterfall has a potential solution.
medium.com
Why I build my apps using Texture
I linked to the rebranding of AsyncDisplayKit as Texture last year, but I haven't seen much mention of it since then. I liked this article by Robin Malhotra which brought me back up to speed with a few examples of how it can be used.
medium.com
iOS Factor
The slight problem with guides to best practices for iOS apps is that, even if they are open source (like this one is) is getting everyone to agree on what actually is best practice. That said, this site certainly has good practices in it and there's nothing too controversial that I can see!
ios-factor.com
Icon for File with UIKit
This isn't something I have ever needed to do, but it's very cool that there is still a mechanism for doing it on iOS. Daniel Jalkut walks us through the process of getting an icon to represent an arbitrary file type.
indiestack.com
Design
Material Design on iOS
Interesting article by Michał Kwiecień on whether or not we should be using Google's mobile design patterns in our iOS apps. For the record, I agree with Michał and don't think we should, but it's interesting to see that Google is really leading the way with guidance when it comes to mobile design. For something that started as such as strong point of iOS (and has always, and remains, a strong point of macOS) I'm surprised Apple haven't done more on this since the launch of iOS 7.
For example, why don't we have something like the recently introduced Material Theming and Theme Editor for iOS?
netguru.co
Refactoring UI
This new site from Adam Wathan and Steve Schoger isn't iOS specific but most of the advice here is just as relevant no matter what size of screen you're designing for. I especially liked this Twitter moment collecting all of the advice so far.
refactoringui.com
Sponsored Jobs
Senior iOS Engineer, Slack, Position is based in San Francisco, CA (no remote work)
Be a technical leader + coach/mentor in building out Slack's internationalization features for iOS!
grnh.se
Senior iOS Developer at Axios - Remote (within the USA)
Join Axios by helping us launch into the mobile app space for the first time!
grnh.se
My bags are packed and in less than 24 hours I'll be in the air on my way to San Jose! ✈️
Whether you're going to be at one of the full length conferences (WWDC, AltConf, NextDoor or Layers), one of the shorter events (try! Swift), watching the keynote online either through the official page, the official app or through the recently updated WWDC.io app or at one of the countless other events that are happening all over the world (like this one in London) I hope you all have a great week! Let's meet back here next week to recap it all?
I'm going to be starting my week in California with a pre-keynote #noqueue breakfast and I'll also be attending some of the runs being organised throughout the week over at WWDC.run. As for the evenings, there's the WWDC Parties app to fill up your schedule.
If you're going to be in the area, I'd like to highlight two great ways to meet and socialise with people next week which is by far the most important reason you're there. First is WWDC.family which is location sharing for everyone at the conference. Also, Beacon which was launched last year for impromptu events. I'll be using both!
Let's wrap this up with some great advice from Tyler Fox. Actually, I'm going to slightly modify his advice. No matter your career plans, if you're lucky enough to be inside the convention centre go and spend time in labs with the engineers of the frameworks you're interested in. I've lost count of the amount of positive things that have happened that started with a lab conversation. In fact, I'm sure that the first time I met Tyler was doing exactly that. Even if you're not inside the main event, make sure you meet and spend time all of the other engineers, designers and other people involved with iOS who'll be in the city that week. Come back from the conference thinking "Wow, I can't believe how many amazing people I met".
Oh and if you see me, please do come up and say Hi! 👋
Dave Verwer