 iOS < Design, Development > issue - 7

This blog post is a self-curated list of some of the important (totally unbiased) happenings in iOS development and design community for this week. I have divided them into several categories so that you can follow articles which ever suits your mood right now. So lets start with:

Development Read #

Lets get to the point. This blog will be mostly about iOS development so is this section. So brace yourself for some deep heavy iOS stuff.

• Objc.io - Swift
  One day after Apple’s iPhone and WATCH event, there’s a lot of new stuff to digest. But in addition to new hardware, Apple’s new programming language, Swift, went 1.0 yesterday. And that’s what this issue is all about.
  
  
• Swift Playground Builder
  Create your own interactive Swift playgrounds with embedded documentation compiled from Markdown.
  
  
• Design-Patterns-In-Swift
  Design Patterns implemented in Swift.
  
  
• from-objective-c-to-swift
  In this article I want to share with you some of the thoughts I had along the way during my transition from Objective-C to Swift.
  
  
• Swift Has Reached 1.0
  On June 2, 2014 at WWDC, the Swift team finally showed you what we had been working on for years. That was a big day with lots of excitement, for us and for developers around the world. Today, we’ve reached the second giant milestone - Swift version 1.0 is now GM.
  
  
• changes-to-the-swift-standard-library-in-xcode-6-1
  The first beta of Xcode 6.12 saw more changes to the standard library than we saw in the pre-1.0 beta.
  
  
• Flattenin’ Your Mappenin’
  Last time we looked at the incredible little map function, and saw how it could be used to simplify a lot of tedious for-loops while making our code more clear and less error-prone. This time, we’re going to see if we can solve a common problem that happens with mapping, nesting.
  
  
• swift-why-annoying-is-good
  Swift is awesome, but I occasionally found myself butting heads with the type system. I’m a huge fan of type systems so why was Swift getting in my way ?
  
  
• cocoapods-keys
  A key value store for enviroment and application keys. Its good security practice to keep production keys out of developer hands. CocoaPods-keys makes it easy to have per-user config settings stored securely in the developer’s keychain, and not in the application source.
  
  
• building-custom-ui-element-with-ibdesignable
  It looks like Apple really wants us to unleash our creativity and they are proving it with a couple of useful additions that come with Xcode 6 and iOS 8: IBDesignable is one of them.
  
  
• MapBox
  Add custom maps to your apps and sites in minutes.

Development Tools / Libraries #

Well this is a lighter section. It only talks about the new iOS libraries and Xcode plugins that you can integrate into your project / workflow.

• ios-snapshot-test-case
  A “snapshot test case” takes a configured UIView or CALayer and uses the renderInContext: method to get an image snapshot of its contents. It compares this snapshot to a “reference image” stored in your source code repository and fails the test if the two images don’t match.
  
  
• springy-slider
  The spring slider is control used to select a single value from a continuous range of values, just like UISlider. The main difference is change in a thumb’s behaviour.

Design Read #

If you think design is as important as development then yes you are at the right section and if not then also you are at the right section as it will help you appreciate it too.

• designing-for-privacy-on-facebook
  Last year when I came to Facebook as a Product Designer I was given a choice of which team to join. I had some great options to choose from, so it was not an easy decision. I chose to join a team I viewed as the most challenging, the Privacy team. I felt excited by the idea of bringing design to something that isn’t necessarily shiny, but is a fundamental construct of the service.
  
  
• UI Gradients
  Beautiful colour gradients.
  
  
• Photoshop Actions and Automator
  Automator Workflows for iOS, Android and screen design.

General Read #

This section covers non-coding & non-design articles related to iOS and mobile so grab a cup of coffee or turn on some light music and give it a casual read, I’m sure you will like it.

• apple-pay-insights
  How Apple Pay works and why it matters for developers.
  
  
• Steve Jobs Introduces the iPhone 6 and Apple
  Let’s review parts of the keynote that felt weak and see if Steve can make it shine.
  
  
• indie-dev-part-2
  This is the second part of my story about becoming an indie iOS developer.
  
  
• Citymapper
  Bye, Google Maps. Citymapper is what happens when you actually understand user experience.