Loading an Image Asynchronously in iOS

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If you had read thru Apple’s iOS Human Interface Guidelines, I’m sure you’d notice that it mentioned about how your app should provide a responsive user experience. If the app is processing a lengthy operation, it ought to provide a feedback as suggested by Apple, “Subtle animation can give people meaningful feedback..” Consider this lengthy operation:  loading image from a URL. This is a very common task. The problem is, UIImageView doesn’t have a built-in method that lets you load an image and at the same time give you a chance to provide a meaningful UI feedback such as a “subtle animation”.

Rapidly Building Mock API Servers for Testing and Development

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On my most recent project I was building the client-side of a mobile app. I was a few days ahead of the backend in terms of functionality, but what was really giving me issue was the absence of any kind of test data. Rather than kill my momentum and allow the backend to block my development, I decided to build a quick API “emulator” that would allow the client to perform actions and feed it randomized test data.

Ex2d: A helpful plugin for Unity3D

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A lightweight plugin for Unity.

Our most recent in house project was a fun children’s game called Whack Attack, and was built with Unity 3D and released for iPhones and android devices.  Unity is a great tool, but it is definitely (and obviously) more geared for game crafting in the third dimension.  Our game deals mostly with two dimensional sprites, although they are set in a pseudo 3d environment to attain some basic perspective.

Facebook Photo Picker for Android

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Select Album Screen

On a recent project, we needed a widget that would allow users to select a photo from their Facebook albums. “Surely the new Facebook Android SDK must support this.” I thought. Alas, my hopes were unfulfilled. “Well, I bet there is a third-party solution for this!”, I surmised, but again, my search was for naught. At this point I decided to roll up my sleeves and do it myself.

You Do What Android Want = Android Do What You Want ~ Part 1: The Mystical 9-Patch

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The Mystical 9 patch

You Do What Android Want = Android Do What You Want
Part 1: The Mystical 9-Patch

I recently encountered some blank stares from some colleagues regarding certain aspects of the 9-patch.

Granted, there doesn’t seem to be all that much documentation out there explaining the ins and outs of nine patch, possibly adding to the mystique, but then again, maybe there isn’t all that much to explain.

Here I’ll outline the basics of the 9-patch, and you can comment as to whether it indeed makes simple sense… or instead, communicate your own blank stare with some scathing criticism below in the comments section.

Introduction To Core Data

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Core Data is a framework provided by Apple that allows developers to design, build and interact with a database, without ever having any direct interaction with SQL.

Testing UI in iOS….and some Gotchas

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Most times in your application  a solid unit test trumps testing your UI. But that’s no reason to neglect your UI from having to endure the same rigorous testing you give your models. “But I don’t have time to sit around and tap every part of my application.”, you say. Enter Automation…

Customizing the Facebook iOS SDK FBFriendPickerViewController; Adding a Search Bar

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As Facebook integration into iOS comes along, it feels like all applications must integrate social features. Having the ability to review your Facebook friends list within your app is one of the most important social features. Sharing the app or posts from within the app with friends is one of the best ways to virally spread the product among several people.

One of my recent projects required upgrading the Facebook SDK to the latest version, 3.1. It was using Version 2.0.