IphoneDevelopment
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iPhone devsugar: Improved Network Reachability routines
Apple makes it clear: when applications rely on network connectivity, they must always test for a valid connection and report those results to the user. If the app cannot reach the Internet, the user needs to know. App Store reviewers regularly reject applications that do not test, and when a connection is not found, report that the network cannot be accessed. Developers need to integrate this process into their apps. If your app connects to a server, for example, it must test the current iPhone configuration and report to the user whenever the network cannot be reached. Apple provides sample code to help with this. iPhone developer Andrew Donoho was not particularly impressed by Apple's sample reachability code. So he decided to do something about it. He has created an open source, BSD-licensed update, which he posted on his website. His updated reachability utilities fix a few Apple misspellings and tunes up the code, allowing you to revert to the original implementation via compiler flags. You can easily download his update and integrate it into your iPhone applications. His write-up describes the testing process and offers an implementation process for successive network tests. You build your decision tree and user feedback off the results of each test. Donoho has provided this code to allow others to build off his work without having to re-invent the entire process from Apple's original source. If you're interested in a slightly different take on reachability, you might also want to take a peek at my UIDevice Extension category, which provides a number of other approaches to Reachability checks. Among other features, the category includes a WiFi check and hooks that allow you to change reachability status from within your application. As noted in the code, these Airplane Mode hooks are for testing only and not App Store safe.
WidgetPad: web development for iPhone apps
Sorting through the tips inbox, we encountered a new product that is coming out for the iPhone next week. It's not an app, game, or anything we "normal folk" would use but it looks to be a great open source, web-based development platform for iPhone. WidgetPad allows web developers to create iPhone applications using only their knowledge in web-based code. The software allows you to write your applications using web-based code and then transfer them to standalone apps for the iPhone or iPod touch. We're being told that the iPhone is only the beginning; the software will eventually translate to other smart phone platforms so that developers can quickly and easily export their applications for other app stores without re-writing the code. Here are some quick highlights: Create web-based applications that utilize each phone's hardware capabilities. The environment includes and helps you learn HTML 5. It's all open source. If you want another feature, you can help the development team create it. Each application is written within the software and can be publish directly to the iPhone (more platforms soon). Source code editing for Javascript, HTML 5 and CSS (with syntax highlighting). No additional software - all of the work is done directly from your browser. I am not a developer, but I do some web design on occasion. I find it very interesting that I could create an iPhone application without learning Cocoa Touch and the Objective C language. I imagine that porting these apps to Palm's WebOS would be quite simple since it's already running a form of web-based code for its applications. If this software works well, we could not only see an increase in the already thriving iPhone developer world, but the smart phone app world as a whole. If you end up taking the leap, let us know what you find. We'll keep you updated and let you know our results in a later post.
Apple and Stanford to offer free iPhone development courses online
Would-be iPhone developers struggling to make their apps do more than fart and crash take note: Apple and Stanford have partnered to offer videos and course materials from Stanford's undergraduate iPhone app development course through iTunes. The course is being taught by two Apple engineers, and it sounds like videos will go up regularly -- the first is scheduled to post on Friday. Alright, let's all practice together: "Yeah, I took a class at Stanford." Sounds good, doesn't it? [Via Wired]
Lights Off: a native iPhone game
Given the fast and furious rate that iPhone native apps are becoming available you might get the mistaken impression that Apple has finally released an API for coders to get their hands on. Nope, Apple is still defending AT&T's network from third party developers, but that doesn't stop motivated people (and it helps if they are clever to boot).The latest iPhone application is the first fully native iPhone game, Lights Off. The game is simple enough; turn off all the lights by pressing them and you advance to the next level. The real shocker here is the polish. This app looks like it shipped with the iPhone, and that's a huge accomplishment especially when compared with the command line iPhone apps that have been available as of late, impressive as those may be.Sadly, the lack of support from Apple means that getting Lights Off running on your iPhone is harder than it should be, but I'm hopeful that Apple will see all this cool developer activity and open up the iPhone a little. It could happen, right?A word of warning, this software is provided as is, so if you aren't comfortable mucking around with your iPhone's innards it might behoove you to wait until Apple supports this sort of thing.[via Daring Fireball]
