Issue 414

26^th July 2019

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

When UIKit was first introduced, one of the things I loved about it was how much easier it was to customise the look and feel of views than it was with AppKit, where I was developing at the time. Of course AppKit has improved drastically over the years too, but from day one building custom components on iOS felt so easy. I’m also quite sure that this ease of customisation was one of the major contributing factors to iOS becoming such a wonderful playground for software design in those first few years.

It feels like with SwiftUI, things have moved even further in that direction. It’s so trivial to make custom, reusable UI now that it feels like iOS could be poised to become a design playground all over again.

But if that happens, is it a good thing? Over the last few years, there has definitely been a trend to conform to “standard” iOS UI as much as possible. I’m a fan of that, I think it makes much more usable apps, and we all strive to create those. But I also miss coming across apps that have completely new UI concepts. For example, remember that pull to refresh was not invented by Apple, but by Loren Brichter.

I don’t know where it will lead us, but having such expressive tools for creating UI has me very excited for the future of iOS app design in a time when it feels like it has stagnated a bit.

Dave Verwer

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News

I first linked to this more than two years ago but Doug Gregor gave a repeated call for open source package maintainers to consider adding their projects to the Swift Source Compatibility Suite this week, especially if they are SwiftUI based. Do you maintain one? Get it on that list.

This is really interesting. It’s a pitch over on the Swift Forums by Ben Cohen and Max Moiseev to simplify contribution to the standard library, and allow features be developed more quickly. If this goes through, this also breaks Swift even further away from being tied to the annual iOS/macOS release cycles which can only be a good thing.

Tools

You’ve almost certainly been in this situation, especially if you work with other people. You add a new asset to a project and don’t immediately remove the old version. Before you know it, your app is a disaster of unused resources and no one knows what can be safely removed. Let Antoine van der Lee guide you through a few tools that’ll help you get it back under control.

Code

Core NFC is getting a big upgrade in iOS 13. 💳 It can read more types of tags, and it can write tags too! Bartłomiej Woronin has a really comprehensive guide to everything that’s new, as well as sample code if you’d like it demonstrated.

Federico Zanetello with a super in-depth look at CollectionDifference. I never want to have to solve this problem myself, so I’m extremely happy to see the Swift standard library tackle this kind of thing.

Even though there are ways to approximate one with standard SwiftUI controls, the lack of an explicit grid view is a fairly glaring omission from SwiftUI. Then again, we managed until iOS 6 without UICollectionView! Maybe we don’t need to wait that long with SwiftUI though, as Karol Kulesza has put this library together.

Design

This is such a great point from Meng To. Blending modes in Photoshop (and other tools) have been around for forever, but implemening designs that used them could be extremely difficult, and usually wasn’t worth the effort. Now they’re first class citizens in SwiftUI, off you go!

This is a wonderful piece by Rob Whitaker on accessibility and inclusive design. As someone who still has an arm in a plaster cast, and is still going through treatment for a vision issue, accessibility is on my mind a lot right now, but it shouldn’t take personal experiences like that for us to care about it.

He also wrote recently about the European Accessibility Act which is a new piece of EU legislation coming in later this year, that we’ll all need to be familiar with.

Business and Marketing

The long road to overnight success…

Videos

Juanpe Catalán and Sofia Swidarowicz with a very cool iOS app that brings together a huge amount of video content from a whole host of conferences. Search by conference, by speaker, or just browse a list of talks. Looks great 👍

Jobs

iOS Developer Trainee Program @ The App Academy – Boost Your Career In Mobile Tech. Apply For The iOS Developer Trainee Program At The App Academy Now! – Amsterdam, NL

iOS Swift Engineer @ Redzone Production Systems – Looking for a development role where you can have an impact and play a key role in a social/mobile enterprise application? We are looking for a proven iOS/tvOS Swift developer to work alongside our Scala, iOS/tvOS, and DevOps engineers as part of a highly collaborative team. – Remote, or Miami FL, Orlando FL, Birmingham UK

Senior iOS Engineer @ CityMapper – Located in the heart of London, our small team of iOS developers helps make cities usable. Cities are complicated. We use the power of open data, mobile and payment technology to make transport sustainable and hassle free. Our award-winning transport app is built for the real world of commuters and their daily needs across 39 cities. Work on an app that you and your friends use every day. – London, UK but with Visa and Relocation offered

There’s more great jobs over on iOS Dev Jobs of course. Or, are you looking for the perfect applicant for your open position?

And finally...

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