Issue 80

8^th February 2013

Written by Dave Verwer

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News

Apple gave us a little gift this week by launching appstore.com which can be used to create short URLs which link to any app or company listing on either the iOS or Mac App Store. You will need to follow some simple rules to remove accented characters, ampersands, etc… to create your link but this is much better than the standard App Store links if anyone actually needs to read your URL.

So this looks to be a big move from Dropbox to try and mop up some of the fallout from the increasing numbers of developers who are frustrated with iCloud syncing issues. The biggest issue is that (obviously) this requires your users to have a Dropbox account to sync with which is certainly going to limit your market as while everyone has an iCloud account guaranteed, the same is not true for a Dropbox account.

Tools

After having used it for the last week or so I agree with Peter Kamb that it appears that Xcode’s recent love affair with NSStream, NSLocale and friends is finally over. I have been training people this week and it feels like the first time in a long time that I haven’t felt the need to apologise for Xcode code completion.

Stefan Ceriu with a small OS X tool for reading localisable strings out of an Xcode project and presenting a simple interface for a translator to work with. This feels like one of those personal utilities that has evolved over time to become invaluable before being released as open source. Great work.

Ever wondered how all of the parameters in a CATransform3D affect it visually? I know I have. This small test app by Muh Hon Cheng is a great way to visualise a transform and learn more about how the parameters work by experimenting with them live.

Code

Like Matt Long, I come across people regularly who are not aware of the power available to them with the Objective-C collection classes. Matt goes through a quick tour of some of their lesser known features.

If you are just wanting to get started with Objective-C or want to brush up your basic skills a little then this is a very well written and clear tutorial by Ryan Hodson which was published recently. I have been slacking on linking to beginner level material recently so hopefully this will make up for that.

I could not agree more with Ash Furrow here, my rule goes that whenever it is safe to use a getter/setter I will always choose it over direct ivar access. I like to make it really hard for myself to make stupid mistakes and so should you.

Design

I love this. It may not appear to be relevant to software development at first but the process designing a foolproof feature is universal across product design and software design. Make sure no one is tempted to pour water into that button you placed thinking its purpose would be obvious.

In an ideal world I would say this is not the best solution for this problem but with the APIs that are currently available this is definitely needs to become a thing. Who wants to live in an ideal world anyway?

I linked to the Rounded Rectangle Radius Resizer from Photoshop Scrips back in issue 71, looks like they have fitted it with a supercharger for this one with multiple corner styles, smoothing and support for non rectangular shapes. This level of control should be standard within Photoshop, unfortuately it isn’t.

And finally...

Ever wanted to try being a compiler? Bryan Klimt gives you the chance with this blocks quiz.