iPhone

Importing & Exporting Documents in iOS

weimenglee — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 12:13:57 +0000

One of the common tasks that an iOS developer has to do is to import or export documents from his iOS application. For example, suppose you are developing a document reader and you want to allow the user to import documents into your application so that it can be read offline. Also, your reader might also support the exporting of documents so that other applications can make use of the document.

In this article, I will walk you through the different techniques you can employ to allow documents to be imported or exported from your iOS application.

Creating the Project

Introduction to Windows Phone 7 Development

weimenglee — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 08:49:50 +0000

By now, you should already have heard of Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 mobile OS. And while many developers are busy developing for Android and iPhone, Microsoft is hard at work, developing its killer mobile OS that could give the competitors a run for the money. Before you dismiss Microsoft as a serious contender in the mobile space, think again. The new OS is now a total rewrite of the older Windows Mobile platform, and sports many features that you have come to expect of a modern mobile operating system.

SMS Bubble UI in iPhone Apps

weimenglee — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:50:36 +0000

Users of iPhone are no stranger to the built-in SMS application that displays your messages using cute little bubbles (see Figure 1).

However, this innovative UI feature is not exposed to the iPhone developers - you have to create it yourself if you want to have the same look-and-feel of the SMS application. Creating this UI - which I will call the Bubble UI, allow you to represent information in a conversational style. A good application of this is when you are creating a chat application. Messages exchanged between two persons can be shown in message bubbles.

Offline iPhone Web Apps

weimenglee — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:56:34 +0000

One of the several features outlined in the HTML 5 specification is the support for Web applications that continue to work while they are offline. This feature is very useful for Web applications because a Web application can be loaded just once and then run offline without needing a persistent Internet connection, making it behave just like a locally installed native application.

Dashcode supports the manifest attribute available in the HTML 5 specifications for offline web applications. And so in this article, you will learn how to write offline iPhone Web applications using Dashcode.

Location in iPhone Web Apps

weimenglee — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:40:49 +0000

One of the key limitations of developing Web applications for iPhone is that you are not allowed to access the hardware on the device via the Web browser. For example, you cannot access the camera on the iPhone; neither can you access the accelerometer. This seriously limits the kinds of applications you can develop on the iPhone. One notable exception, however, is the support for tracking the location of devices, through a combination of GPS, Wi-Fi, and cellular triangulation.

Future of the Mobile Web

mclancy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:13:12 +0000

Last week we hosted an event loftily entitled "The Future of the Mobile Web" at the Dublin Convention Centre.

Programming Apple Push Notification Services

weimenglee — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:56:55 +0000

One of the key limitations of the iPhone is its constraint on running applications in the background. Because of this, applications cannot keep running in the background when the user switches to another application. So, applications that require a constant state of connectivity (such as social networking applications) will not be able to receive timely updates.

Free iPhone Programming PDF

ruadhan — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:11:28 +0000

Hopefully you've been enjoying our series of iPhone articles over previous weeks.The topics recently covered in this series have looked at both developing native apps with Xcode, and developing webapps with Dashcode. Xcode and Dashcode are two IDEs supplied with the iPhone SDK.

Now you can get a PDF download that covers both of these approaches to programming for iPhone in one handy document. The content has been arranged (by Wei-Meng Lee) into two practical 'Labs', and is ideal if you are just starting out and want a chance to dip your toe into both approaches. And did I mention it's FREE...?

Build Web Apps for iPhone using Dashcode

weimenglee — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:44:00 +0000

So far, much mobile developer attention has been fixated on the iPhone SDK released by Apple to build native iPhone applications. This is understandable, since with the SDK you can write native iPhone apps that take full advantage of the capabilities provided by the device, such as accessing the accelerometer, the camera, as well as obtain geographical locations using Core Location.

iPhone Programming Fundamentals - Outlets and Actions

weimenglee — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:06:28 +0000

An understanding of outlets and actions is one of the first things you will need for iPhone programming. For someone coming from the .NET background, this is a concept that requires some time to get used to - the concepts are similar, but it is a different way of doing things.

And so, in this article, I am going to show you what outlets and actions are. At the end of this article, you will have a solid understanding of how to create outlets and actions, and be on your way to creating great iPhone apps.