You can find it on my blog here.

The only thing I want to say is:if you want to improve your skills in Cocoa, for Mac, iPhone or iPad, you should go: you’ll have the best speakers, the best organization you can dream of. And you will come back with new contacts, new ideas, new code to try.

You can (should) read Alex Repty report here.

It’s a GreaseMonkey (and GreaseKit) script that will obliterate all mentions of the words “Tablet”, “iSlate”, “iPad”, “iTablet” and replace them with “Unicorn”, because more people have seen Unicorns than the famous iTablet.

So this is how this post looks without the script:

And with script installed:

To use this script, you’ll need to have GreaseMonkey installed (if running Firefox) or GreaseKit if you use Safari.

You can install (or download) the script here .

This script is based on the dumbquotes sample, my previous attempt with jQuery was a too heavy to load for each page.

Have fun, and I hope I will not need this script for too long.

These are:

• mailto
• YouTube
• maps.google.com
• iTunes
• AppStore

I’ve written a generic BrowserViewController, code available on GitHub here: http://github.com/sburlot/browserviewcontroller which handles all these cases:

mailto links are handled with a MFMail: I tried to handle all variations on the link: “to”, “cc”, “subject” and “body”.

YouTube, Map, iTunes and AppStore links are opened in their respective apps.

You can customise the view and decide if you want a navigation tab bar or not.

The navigation tab bar will add standard web buttons: Back, Forward, Stop, Reload and also a button to send the url of the current page via email, or open it in Safari.

Enjoy!

So here is a list of some of the tools, template to design your next iPhone application.

Templates:

• Keynote ’09: via MockApp
• Microsoft PowerPoint (WTF?): via MockApp
• OmniGraffle: via Patrick Crowley
• OmniGraffle: via Yahoo
• OmniGraffle: via Designing Web Interfaces
• Illustrator: via Mercury Intermedia
• PhotoShop: via Teehan+Lax

Specialized Tools

• Balsamiq Mockups

For pen & paper aficionados:

• Stainless steel stencil: iPhone Stencil Kit
• DesignCommission also provides a PDF template
• Sketch Paper in pdf: on labs.boulevard
• Printed SketchBook: Kaplan Software Group

In Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware, Andy Hunt recommends using pen and paper to use your right brain and free your creative mind. When using a computer, you will concentrate on the details, not the complete user experience.

Another drawback of using a computer: if you show your design to the client, he also will concentrate on the details (“can you change the shade of this red button? It’s TOO red.”). Showing a hand-drawn design will let him imagine how the final product will look. This can be a double-edged sword, so you better know what the customer is expecting before using one of these techniques.

Here is the code:

- (CGImageRef)CGImageRotatedByAngle:(CGImageRef)imgRef angle:(CGFloat)angle
{
  CGFloat angleInRadians = angle * (M_PI / 180);
  CGFloat width = CGImageGetWidth(imgRef);
  CGFloat height = CGImageGetHeight(imgRef);

  CGRect imgRect = CGRectMake(0, 0, width, height);
  CGAffineTransform transform = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation(angleInRadians);
  CGRect rotatedRect = CGRectApplyAffineTransform(imgRect, transform);

  CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
  CGContextRef bmContext = CGBitmapContextCreate(NULL,
                                                 rotatedRect.size.width,
                                                 rotatedRect.size.height,
                                                 8,
                                                 0,
                                                 colorSpace,
                                                 kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedFirst);
  CGContextSetAllowsAntialiasing(bmContext, FALSE);
  CGContextSetInterpolationQuality(bmContext, kCGInterpolationNone);
  CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);
  CGContextTranslateCTM(bmContext,
                        +(rotatedRect.size.width/2),
                        +(rotatedRect.size.height/2));
  CGContextRotateCTM(bmContext, angleInRadians);
  CGContextTranslateCTM(bmContext,
                        -(rotatedRect.size.width/2),
                        -(rotatedRect.size.height/2));
  CGContextDrawImage(bmContext, CGRectMake(0, 0,
                                           rotatedRect.size.width,
                                           rotatedRect.size.height),
                     imgRef);

  CGImageRef rotatedImage = CGBitmapContextCreateImage(bmContext);
  CFRelease(bmContext);
  [(id)rotatedImage autorelease];

  return rotatedImage;
}

Some companies are already providing (or planning to provide) a gateway to the APN:

These are:

• Urban Airship
• iLime
• AppNotify

These are in closed beta:

• Push.io
• iPushServer.com
• msgpush

Urban Airship and iLime also provide In App Purchase.

Or you can build your own: Open Source & Tutorials

• ApnsPHP: Apple Push Notification & Feedback Provider
• EasyAPNS: Open Source solution (PHP, MySQL)
• Tutorial on how to setup your own server in PHP
• Source code (in PHP), requires PHP with memcache
• Python wrapper for Apple Push Notification Service
• A universal Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) provider in Python
• Apple Push Notification Library for Haskell
• Apple Push Notification Library for Ruby
• Rails plugin for Apple Push Notifications
• Apple Push Notifications on Rails
• Apple Push Notification & Feedback Services Client C# Library
• Persistent Apple APNS interface for Perl 5

I will try to keep this list updated.

Edit: added ApnsPHP & pyapns.org
Edit: separated the active services from the beta, added msgpush.com and C# Library
Edit: added a Rails plugin
Edit: added AppNotify (in Beta)
Edit: AppNotify is no more in Beta.
Edit: Added EasyAPNS source code
Edit: Removed Bigcurl HTTPush, since it’s reserved for bigcurl agency customers
Edit: added a Perl module

If you touch quickly a row, the row will highlight just before the animation starts.

If the action performed when touching the row takes some time (let’s say more than 0.5 seconds), after having touched the row, nothing will be visible while your code is running then the row will highlight and the animation will happen.

To make the row highlight immediately, so the user has a immediate feedback on its action, do this:

Change the name of your method
- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)_tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath

to

- (void) didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath

And add this method to your view controller:

- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)_tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
  [self performSelector:@selector(didSelectRowAtIndexPath:) withObject:indexPath afterDelay:0.1f];
}

The feedback when touching a row is immediate and will greatly improve the subjective responsiveness of your application (IMHO).

(via the Instapaper blog)

Since I haven’t done a lot of PHP recently, I had to look in the documentation for the function that reads a file into an array because I couldn’t remember the name.

There is a reason for that: the name of this function is (take a deep breath):

file

Who can remember a function name that doesn’t relate to what it’s supposed to do?

In Cocoa, we have “arrayWithContentsOfFile“, and when reading some code, if you find

varName = [NSArray arrayWithContentsOfFile:someData];

Even with non-significant variable names as in this example, you can understand what this assignment does.

But when you read

varName = file(someData);

You have no clue, unless you code in PHP everyday.

I really can’t understand the logic behind the naming of functions in PHP.

Example:

Why do we have “utf8_encode“, “json_encode” but “urlencode“?

PHP is really teh suck.

PS: I do prefer Perl as a scripting language, perhaps because I’ve done more Perl in my life than PHP. I must admit that

@varName = <someData>;

isn’t clearer, but I do prefer it.

PS2: while ranting about PHP, I wondered what was the longest method name in Cocoa, so with the help of a Perl script, here are my findings:

MacOSX 10.5:
managedObjectContextsToMonitorWhenSyncingPersistentStoreCoordinator

67 chars, I’m glad to have auto-completion in Xcode.

iPhone SDK 2.2.1
willAnimateSecondHalfOfRotationFromInterfaceOrientation

Only 55 chars, still auto-completion is a must!