Ios 23
Tutorial: Designing and Exporting Your App Icon
After coding your app it’s time to make that killer icon that’s going to make your app stand out from the rest in the store. There are many things to consider to designing the best icon to fit your app.
Tips to Designing the Best App Icon
1. If your app is an already established brand, then it’s best to use that brand recognition in the icon by using the logo (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc..). If you don’t have a big brand then your icon should represent what the app does. Instagram is a good example since it shows that it’s a camera app.2. Stay away from using text that’s longer than one word within the icon. It makes it very difficult to read when it’s sized down for the iPhone. It may read well in the 1024×1024 version of the icon, but test it on the phone to see if it’s still legible.
3. The design and colours of the icon should mimic the look of the app. It gives the experience that it’s truly a miniature representation of the app. When the user taps on the icon to open the app it should be a fluent transition of style.
4. Try to make your icon original. Since there are so many apps out there, yours may stand out if it looks different than the other ones in your category.
5. Emotion. You want your user to get an emotional connection to your app through the icon. You’ll notice that most of the top games all have a character or animal representing their game. That gives an emotional connection through the characters expression.
Icon Inspiration
Below are a couple links to collections of nice icons to give you an idea:What Do the Top 100 Paid App Icons Have in Common?
iOS Icon Gallery
Icons Feed
iOS App Icon Designs (iOSpirations)
40 Brilliant iPhone & iPad Application Icons
45+ Fantastic iOS App Icon Designs for Inspiration
Exporting your Icon
Once you have designed your fabulous icon, you’ll need to export it to all the sizes required by Apple.This is the best Photoshop template for creating iOS App Icons:
PixelReport’s App Icon Template
With this template, you can see what your icon will look like in situation, within the app store and on the springboard. Then with a simple action all icons are saved out for you including in the proper naming conventions required.
Tutorial: Setting an Event in iCal
If you would need to programmatically set an event in the users Calendar you’ll need to leverage the EventKit framework API. The EventKit framework provides classes for accessing and manipulating calendar events and reminders.
First, access your target settings, click on “Summary”, scroll down to the “Linked Frameworks and Libraries” group and click the + button to add a new framework to your project. Search for ‘EventKit.Framework’.
Then you will be able to add a method like the one below to your class.
First add the EventKit framework to the top of your *.m file.
#import
Next use the method below to set the iCal event.
-(void) setiCalEvent {
// Set the Date and Time for the Event
NSDateComponents *comps = [[NSDateComponents alloc] init];
[comps setYear:2013];
[comps setMonth:3];
[comps setDay:5];
[comps setHour:9];
[comps setMinute:0];
[comps setTimeZone:[NSTimeZone systemTimeZone]];
NSCalendar *cal = [[NSCalendar alloc] initWithCalendarIdentifier:NSGregorianCalendar];
NSDate *eventDateAndTime = [cal dateFromComponents:comps];
// Set iCal Event
EKEventStore *eventStore = [[EKEventStore alloc] init];
EKEvent *event = [EKEvent eventWithEventStore:eventStore];
event.title = @"EVENT TITLE";
event.startDate = eventDateAndTime;
event.endDate = [[NSDate alloc] initWithTimeInterval:600 sinceDate:event.startDate];
// Check if App has Permission to Post to the Calendar
[eventStore requestAccessToEntityType:EKEntityTypeEvent completion:^(BOOL granted, NSError *error) {
if (granted){
//---- code here when user allows your app to access their calendar.
[event setCalendar:[eventStore defaultCalendarForNewEvents]];
NSError *err;
[eventStore saveEvent:event span:EKSpanThisEvent error:&err];
}else
{
//----- code here when user does NOT allow your app to access their calendar.
[event setCalendar:[eventStore defaultCalendarForNewEvents]];
NSError *err;
[eventStore saveEvent:event span:EKSpanThisEvent error:&err];
}
}];
}
To customize it for your app, set the date and time of the iCal event, then change the event.title to what you want the user to see in their calendar, and finally the length of the event in seconds (i.e. 600 secs = 1 hour).
[eventStore requestAccessToEntityType:EKEntityTypeEvent completion:^(BOOL granted, NSError *error) {
if (granted){
//---- code here when user allows your app to access their calendar.
}else
{
//----- code here when user does NOT allow your app to access their calendar.
}
}];
On iOS6, Apple introduced a new privacy control. The user can control permissions for the contact and calender by each app. So in the code side, you need to add some way to request the permission. In iOS5 or before, you can always call it without the user having to give permission.
How I Learned Objective-C
I went to school for Computer Programming where I learned C++ but that was over fifteen years ago. Could I learn a new software language now? I got very used to programming for the web using Perl and PHP but those are fairly easy scripting languages, no knowledge of memory management is needed and they are not very object oriented.
The Book
The first place I started was Head First iPhone Development. This was the perfect place to begin. The O’Reilly Head First series of books have been good for me in the past when I was working on my PMP. The way they use visual queues really helps the retention of the concept of the material. I also liked how they wrapped up every chapter with a quiz that tested how much you remembered. The book came with a CD that had all of the code for the tutorial programs in the lessons. It was useful a couple of times when I couldn’t get it to compile my way, then referring to a working program helped. I read though the book twice and I was starting to get it, but I needed more instruction.
The Course
I had heard about Stanford University putting courses online and checked it out on iTunesU. In the Spring of 2009 they had a course named CS193 iPhone Application Programming taught by instructors Evan Doll (later Co-Founded Flipbook) and Alan Cannistraro. What better way to learn Objective-C then from actual programmers from Apple who helped make the platform and SDK. It was a very long course including 40 lessons that were roughly an hour each. It’s pretty amazing that you can watch all of these lessons for FREE in perfect video. You’re getting a Stanford course and learning Objective-C from the best for no cost! The only difference from me and a Stanford student was they get a credit for it and I only get the knowledge. I think that’s even more valuable as it’s been the basis of my new career as an iOS Developer. At the time the SDK that was covered was 3.0. There is a newer version of the course available now, iPad and iPhone Application Development from Winter (2012-13) instructed by Paul Hegarty.
Stay on Target
After reading a book and taking a course for iOS I was ready to start developing. The best way to learn is to start building your own app. You probably have tons of ideas but start with one that is fairly small with only a couple of views. 
If you’ve seen the documentary “Indie Game” you’ll know who Tommy Refenes is. If you haven’t, it’s definitely worth watching if you’re a developer. Tommy recently wrote a great article How do I get started programming games???. The greatest takeaway from it is staying motivated. You have to be obsessed about the app you’re building, you have to want to work on it whenever you have free time. The other key tip, you should breakdown your project into small manageable parts that you can develop at a time. If you think of it as a full game you’ll get overwhelmed, but if you build it one feature at a time you will see that you are making progress and feel an accomplishment during the process instead of just at the end.
Resources
Below is a list of some of my favourite places to find iOS Development tips and tutorials:
– iOSDeveloperTips.com
– idevblogaday
– Stack Overflow
– iCodeBlog
– iPhone Dev SDK
– maniacdev.com
– Ray Wenderlich iPhone Tutorials
– Cocoanetics Blog
As with anything, practice makes perfect. The more code you write, the better you’ll get and build up a useful library of code that you can reuse in all of your future apps.
