As mentioned in a previous post I’m getting to grips with the idiosyncrasies of Cocoa Touch, i’ll try and document them here.
Sometimes the errors listed are not exactly helpfull, see Confusing Objective-C Warnings and Errors.
iPhone 3.0 SDK Development has a very helpfull chapter dealing with confusing error issues.
As a Flash AS3 Developer who has started developing for the iPhone, I’m very interested in finding information from developers who are on a similar learning curve. I’m confident in using MVC, specifically the PureMVC framework.
There are significant similaraties and difrences in AS3 and iPhone Developemnt.
Cocoa touch relies on an MVC framework, the iPhone SDK uses a ‘wizard’ similar to Flexbuilder, the syntax of Objective-C is somewhat diffrent to AS3 dot syntax, Objective-C uses Dynamic Typing and means (some) errors can only be checked on runtime, whilst AS3 can Static Typing, which means errors can only be checked on compile time.
Other developers who have gone through a simialr process and have blogged their findings. Anton Mills has some interesting posts, and Nick Kuh too.
Nick has a great video clip ‘…on the differences between OOP programming languages such as ActionScript 3 and Objective-C‘
Donald Bellenger lists some handy ‘migration points‘ on his post AS3 to Objective-C Cocoa Touch. There are some good points on TypeCasting and Static Methods.
As I’m interested in creating my own iPhone app, I’ve researching which type of app sells and which app of each genre is a good seller.
Sales figures do not appear in the iTunes App store but the number of reviews do. There’s a method to questimate the number of sales from the number of reviews. See Guess sales figures. This method suggests a review to sales ratio of 350:1, that is 1 review would equal 350 sales.
The responses to Peter Melnikov’s post seem to agree to the ratio with some reservations and exceptions, so until a better method is found I’ll use his!
I’ve stumbled across a site apptism which tracks iPhone apps, it does not include sale figures, but amongst other things the site lists the top apps.
I’ve just aquired iPhone 3.0 SDK Development, and thought I should put a good list of iPhone SDK books on my blog.
(I’ll flesh the list out further later.)
I also found a general programming book list here: Best written programming book
I’m very interesting in rationalizing the number of tools and packages used to writing code. Eclipse is my favoured IDE, and for some time I’ve been intereseted in finding a decent plugin to make writing Javascript, HTML and XML easier within Eclipse, rather than using Dreamweaver or UltraEdit.
I’ve found RockStar Optimizer and am currently testing it to see if it’s fit for purpose.
Th plugin can be downloaded via Eclipse, the instructions can be found here: Installation Instructions
Instructions for using the for Javascript part of the Optimizer can be found here: JsLint Eclipse Plugin.
Interestingly the Validator was developed by Douglas Crockford the author of JavaScript: The Good Parts.
It seems the JsLint Plugin is a Validator, rather than a IDE extension like FDT.
I’m also looking at JSEditor, which maybe a little old for my Eclipse, but it promises syntax highlighting and OO aproaches.
The Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) has made JSEditor redundant, installation instructions can be found here.
(Although I’m having trouble adding a new repository with Eclipse, and my have to resort to dowloading the zips.) Also, there a lot of Required Prerequisites so it’s taking bit of time to do!
Working on a French Flash activity, I had problems displaying certain French characters:
OE Upper Case ligature Unicode 0152
oe Lower Case ligature Unicode 0153
Ÿ Upper Case diaeresis Unicode 0178
With a normal (8-bit) font these characters cannot be displayed, so I created a Method in a Class StringUtilities to replace these characters with alternatives.
—
—
public static function replaceFrenchLigatureCharacters(text : String) : String {
var len : Number = text.length;
var returnText : String = “”;
for (var i : Number = 0;i < len; i++) {
var char : String = text.charAt(i);
var code : Number = text.charCodeAt(i);
switch(code) {
case O_E_SMALL_LIGATURE :
returnText += “oe”;
break;
case O_E_UPPER_LIGATURE :
returnText += “OE” ;
break;
case Y_UPPER_DIAERESIS :
returnText += “Y”;
break;
default :
returnText += char;
}
}
return returnText;
}
—
—
This is going to be an issue for all non standard characters which belong to the Extended-A_Unicode_block rather than the standard Basic Latin (00 to 7F) and the Latin-1 Supplement (80 to FF) . So I’m sure this issue will raise it’s head again.
In each item I’ve provided a link to the iTunes store, and link to the Apps maker.
I’ve come accross another iPhone app list which is worth linking to: 50 Helpful iPhone Apps for Web Designers and Developers.
Iv’e been fully enrolled in the iPhone Developer Program, which means I can upload apps to my iPod touch and access the Apple developer site for resources.
The intention of this page is to provide quick links to resources I find useful.
I’m currently looking at he MoviePlayer Sample
Further to my post on Java Style Docs with ZenDoc, I’ve found and used a better tool ASDoc.
I’ve used parts of FDTKit to enable an ANT script to create a directory with the documentation.
The process of using FDTKit can be viewed here: FDTKit Documentation & Usage Guide, theres too much information here for just running the “doc-asdoc” from the build.xml.
The build.xml should be present at the ‘top level’ of the checked out project
Comments in the ActionScript Code should follow wherever possible the Java standard : Javadoc comments should have the following form
Not all the Javadoc tags are supported though, for a list of supported tags see: ASDoc tags
For using the @see tag see:
Using the @see tag
I’ve recently begun to learn the iPhone SDK and this post is to record my initial impressions and experiences.
The language for writing iPhone applications is Objective-C, I previously heard bad things about the language but after a little confusion I’m getting used to it and it’s seems pretty quick to pick up.
The code is written within Apple’s Xcode, which is a very clean and ordered interface. It also uses a GUI Interface Builder.
I purchased: ‘Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK‘, which seems a clear well written book, with decent examples.
To obtain the full iPhone SDK, it is necessary to apply for and join the official iPhone Developer Program.
I’m presently having trouble faxing Apple and am expecting a long wait until I complete the application process.
As an update, the correct fax number from the UK is (including the international dialing code) is:
just keep trying if you cant get a response.
I’ll create further iPhone blogs as I progress.
