Review of Mobile Design Pattern Gallery

A quintessential catalogue for mobile developers, this is a no-frills systematic guide to common patterns. It tries to be device-neutral but does illustrate good and bad patterns on both droid and iOS devices in an easy to navigate and follow reference book. It doesn’t spent too long on explanations but provides a fantastic depth of every possible combination, allowing you as the developer to pick and choose in building your entire application navigation and controls.

The book has over 400 illustrative examples, and its categorised into 10 sections with patterns, anti-patterns (what not to do), discussing conventions as well as times when you can stray out to differentiate provided it meets UX requirements. The book details these patterns for tables (UITableViews), forms (and how to focus and fit the appropriate input controls), charts, help guide controls etc, so you should find the precise combination that would suite your application.

I have this book handy in my development toolbox, when i look at the conceptual stage to do the wireframes in Omnigraffle, and for me, translating existing websites into mobile apps, I need quick references to the controls that replicate the core functionality of the web-app.

I rate this book 9 out of 10, it’s fantastic, what I need without the bells and whistles of theory I don’t need. Just a comprehensive reference book to get you designing the right way from the start.

Mobile Design Pattern Gallery: UI Patterns for Mobile Applications by Theresa Neil

 

Optimizing Connections to the Apple Push Notification Service

Optimizing Connections to the Apple Push Notification Service

iPhone Developer News

The Apple Push Notification Service provides a high-speed, high-capacity interface, so you should establish and maintain an open connection to handle all your notifications. Connections that are repeatedly opened and closed will affect the performance and stability of your connection to the Apple Push Notification Service and may be considered denial-of-service attacks. You should also connect regularly to the feedback service so you don’t send notifications to devices that no longer have your app installed. Learn more about connecting to the Apple Push Notification Service.

Review of Publishing with iBooks Author .

The recent iBooks Authoring tool released by Apple has given amateur book writers and enthusiasts a direct enablement to self-publish their own interactive books to Apple’s bookstore, in a similar way that developers have been given access to the app-store. Nellie McKesson delivers soon after the iBooks Authoring release with a handy book that guides the user through the basics of laying out the structure of the book.

Upgrading to XCode 4.3 and solving the /Developer issue

With the upgrade to XCode 4.3, one of the significant changes is that the /Developer folder is gone and instead bundled within the /Applications/XCode.app/ content bundle. One thing that you have to remember is that for the command-line tools (of which now you should be downloading individually within the Apple Developer Site) is that you have to switch those command lines to use your new path, rather than the old Developer path.

An excellent article from UseYourLoaf, outlines what needs to be done. 

For example I often used the agvtool to manage build version numbers but if you try to run it after installing Xcode 4.3 you will get the following error message:

$ agvtool
Error: No developer directory found at /Developer. 
Run /usr/bin/xcode-select to update the developer
 directory path.

The xcode-select utility allows you to switch between versions of Xcode which makes it easy to correct the problem:

1	$ sudo /usr/bin/xcode-select -switch /Applications/Xcode.app

If you are wondering where all of the files that were previously under /Developer have gone you can find them by right-clicking on the Xcode.app file in the Applications folder and showing the package contents. The old /Developer/usr/bin directory is now in /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin.

Don’t forget to clean up your shell environment if you previously referred to anything under /Developer. So for example, if you added /Developer/usr/bin to your PATH and /Developer/usr/share/man to your MANPATH you will need to prepend /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents to these settings in your shell login script.

 

Review of jQuery Mobile: Up and Running .

This book does indeed seem like a pre-released even though it has alredy been published, but it feels a bit incomplete in many areas, which was the general gist I got from reading this book and comparing it to various other books that I have come across. The second thing I noticed was the way the author structured this book, starting with a theoretical background of JQuery followed by the various controls (such as lists, navigation), leaving out DOM and selector stuff, which falls under the more fundamental JQuery literature, which means this book is catered towards people who have a basic/general understanding of JQuery. Whether the author will in fact later include those in chapters I am not sure of, but I would certainly like to see that summarised in a chapter or two.

Review of ‘Mastering Advanced Git’ by McCullough and Berglund

I probably own about one or two git books, I use git quite a bit but I don’t go beyond my normal basic routines. I then was given the opportunity to review Mastering Advanced Git, a 3-and-a-half-hour video by Matthew McCullough (@matthewmccull) and Tim Berglund (@tlberglund).

After the introductory video warning us that the topics are quite advanced, I decided to review the predecessor set of videos, Mastering Git which went through the basics. Whilst reviewing that set of videos is beyond the scope of this review, it is vital that anyone who is new to Git take that up first as you will be completely lost if you attempt the master version without the pre-requisite knowledge of the first set.

http://blip.tv/play/gvUBgub%2BXgI.html?p=1 

Review of iOS 5 Programming Cookbook

The follow on from iOS 4 Cookbook, which I thoroughly enjoyed by Vandad Nahavandipoor, is the opposite of what you might find being the more concise O’Reilly books on specific iOS topics, that I normally review. Depending on how your mind operates, this book may be an excellent first book, otherwise it makes an even greater secondary reference book. It is certainly not concise, but it doesn’t have the problem that normal iOS books have of going through chapter by chapter skimming certain topics, this one has it all.  It goes through the normal problem–>solution–>discussion process to allow you to quickly identify which topic matches your needs and then explains that topic concisely with an example, rather than go through all the fluff. The fluff is left for the discussion part in case you wanted to know more. But if this isn’t your ideal way of learning, in a non-linear but contextual method, then keep this book as a reference.

Review of Essential iOS Build and Release

Essential iOS Build and Release by Ron Roche is another of those ‘micro-books’, a concise book with a scope solely focused on how to build for testing and publishing your iOS App, whether it’s AdHoc, App Store or through Enterprise distributions. It takes you through the over-complex routes that would get a developer to get the App to have the appropriate provisioning profiles and certificates. It’s standard information that you would probably find in almost any other iOS book, but the conciseness of this book makes it handy when you don’t want to go through the hundreds of pages to find the relevant material.

This 116-page book is well written, with a very important chapter that is something not a lot of developers appreciate. Automating test builds, using open-source tools such as Hudson is something that is lacking in many development environments and not very-well documented generally, so it’s impressive that it is included here. I generally find having a shelf of specialised books rather than a general iOS book to be more useful as you don’t generally find the entire book relevant whereas specialised books are something you pick out because it’s specifically more relevant to you and contains content that are generally either ‘skimmed-over’ or missed out completely by the more general books. 

I give mr Roche four thumbs up, and if I had a half a thumb I’d add that as well. I don’t think there is much more that could have been added to the book, although i would have liked to have seen alternative integration tools such as Atlassian Bamboo referenced, but perhaps once again that may be left for another specialised book, dealing with iOS Testing.

I Rate this book:  4.5 out of 5

Essential iOS Build and Release, 1st Edition

By Ron Roche

Frustrated by the requirements for testing and distributing your iOS app? You’re not alone. This concise book takes you step by step through the maze of certification and provisioning processes that have to happen before, during, and after deve…

Format: Print, Ebook, Safari Books Online

Publish Date: December 2011

Susan Kare | An article from Apple Gazette

This is an interesting article I came across on the Apple Gazette that I thought worth sharing with you guys.

Presenting: the untold, little-known story of one of Apple’s earliest and most influential artists. Susan Kare’s place in history is among its most important and foundational, yet her body of work is comprised of something that most people take for granted and never give a second thought to.

I have to be honest: I’d never heard of Susan Kare before I picked up this book. And once I did, I flipped through its sparse, white pages with lots of empty white space thinking, Okay, so it’s icons. What’s the big deal? It turns out, it is a mighty big deal. You may not have heard of Susan Kare either, so let me give you a quick history lesson. Stay with me, it’s worth it — it ties directly into Apple history.

The essential tools for an iOS/XCode Developer: Part 1

I thought I’d document a fantastic range of resources and software that should be part of an iOS Developer, based on my experiences. The sources I will provide are a historical collection of GitHub sources, as well as software and design tools and plugins that would make your life as a programmer so much easier, richer and ultimately more creative.