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Tuesday
Mar052013

Building iPhone Apps Blog - Now for sale

Today, I have a major announcement to make regarding this blog. I've been thinking about it for a few weeks now. Today, I'm ready to make the announcement.

I created this blog in 2009 when I started to build iPhone apps. I wanted to share my discoveries while crafting these apps. As time went by, I found out that writing in a foreign language (I'm French speaking), takes energies that aren't spent on writing apps. So I had to make a choice. I made it this week.

This blog (and the domain names linked to it) are now for sale. I'm hosting with Squaresace (they are really nice by the way) and I paid for three years (two years are left in the contract). I'm using www.BuySellAds.com for online ads serving so I have monthly ads revenues (I can show report of last year revenues). I can prove the site popularity with Google Analytics.

I'm looking for serious people only. Don't bother to ask questions just for curiosity. I know how much money I want so I won't go under that amount. I'm not in a rush to sell. Payment via PayPal only. I'll ask for down payment to start the transfer process with a final payment at the end of it (US$ only).

If you are looking for a quick start in publishing content for iOS developers and make some money while doing it, this is your chance. Don't miss this opportunity.

You can contact me at jfmartin1967 at gmail com if you are really interested.

Saturday
Nov242012

Entypo - Nice icons for your Apps

Found this nice icons library today: Entypo.

Icons are available as Fonts, Vector and Bitmap.

Available for free. Download it from their website. http://entypo.com.

Thursday
Nov222012

Tokens - An amazingly well design promo codes manager

If you don't know what is Tokens, let me explain: this tools allows you to generate and keep track of promotional codes for App managed by iTunes Connect. Amazing. Go have a look now.

Monday
Nov052012

A must for every single iOS dev - iOS support matrix 2.0

A picture is worth a thousand words.
Sunday
Nov042012

here is a freebie: an iBook from Stanford University about iOS programming

If you want to start programming for iOS and you are looking for a great starting point, please download this free iBook from the iBookstore: CS193P: iPad and iPhone App Development. This is one of the best iBook experience I found on the iPad. Really nicely done.

Saturday
Nov032012

Customizing UINavigationBar in iOS 5 with strange behaviour

Here is a very strange iOS 5 behaviour (same in iOS 6). I'm customizing the appearance of a UINavigationBar with a UIImage as shown below.

The following code is used at application startup:

The end result is what I expect for the first 4 tabs of my UITabbar items like this:

The lighting comes from the top of the app. But, when selecting the More tab and all the other sections, the UINavigationBar look becomes flipped upside down like this:

Does somebody know why? What could be the cause of this? If you look carefully, the UIImage I'm using is actuallty flipped upside down in order to get the desired result... but when selecting the More UITabbar item and the following section, it gets displayed as it is really in the .png file but it is not the desired result as I ant the lighting to come from the top of the app.

This question was also posted on StackOverflow here: Customize UINavigationBar in iOS 5 strange behaviour

Tuesday
Oct302012

AppCooker on sale for a very limited time

OK, first the disclaimer: App Cooker creators are buying all my ad space on Building iPhone Apps. That being said, I'm a delighted user of App Cooker, a mockup and wireframing tool for iOS application design. The app is on sale for a very limited time at 14.99$ instead of 39.99$. Go get it now. This is THE deal.

Thursday
Oct252012

Supporting the iPhone 5 taller screen - oh!

Beside adding a Default-568h@2x.png file to your application, it seems that, after looking a while, you don't need to add other artworks with a -568h@2x in order to support the taller screen of the iPhone 5. The trick seems to be having artworks tall enough to support the taller screen. But I don't like this at all. I have some views which are using visual elements that depends on spatial placement of the UI (the tabbar) and they are built as bitmaps. I'll have to re-imagine that I guess or have to add code that will check for the screen size at runtime and chose which bitmaps to show.

Saturday
Oct202012

Starting the iPhone simulator

I didn't know until today that you could start the iPhone Simulator without starting to compile your app. Right click the Xcode icon in the dock, select Developer Tools, then iOS Simulator. Voilà!

Wednesday
Oct172012

An interview with Postr creator Tomaz Nedeljko

A few months back, I wrote many blog posts about a project I was working on: a client for browsing Tumblr's pictures (see one of my post here). While working on this, I had a chance to find a new iPad client: TumbleBee. I was (I'm still) impressed by this simple and very well designed Tumblr client. The purpose of TumbleBee (now called Postr since release 1.2 that came out this week) is to create, edit and post new stuff on your Tumblr blog. This is quite complementary to my own app idea. So I decided to buy the app and get in touch with its developer, Tomaz Nedeljko. Here is a small interview with Tomaz.
How did you get interested in iOS development?
I think it was after the release of iPhone SDK, when I saw all the great apps coming out for iPhone. I knew that iPhone had great potential, but I think not even Apple had dreamed of what it would eventually become. I decided I had to invest some time into the platform myself.
How did you start to develop?
I think the best way to start is to come up with a project and just throw yourself into it. I did this simple location-aware app that was a part of my graduation thesis. I learned a lot and it helped me go further. My advice is: code first and learn as you go. You can read a ton of guides, API references and books, but unless you get some dirt on your hands, it won't do you much good.
How did you learn to develop and what was your previous knowledge about software development?
I learned the basics in college, everything else came from doing my own stuff. Everything I know about iOS development, I learned by myself from Apple's online documents, open source projects and tackling with code.
How the Postr application idea came? What user need did you try to fill?
I joined Tumblr in 2010. I wanted to put things that inspire me online, just for my own reference, and Tumblr is really great for doing this. When I got my iPhone 4 later that year, I really had a strong desire to do a Tumblr app. It just seemed like a great idea to make something on my own that others might want to use. But I never got beyond naming the app. It actually took me another year to start the project, but by then an iPad app made much more sense as demand for a good one was huge and Tumblr hadn't yet released an official one.
How did you choose the application name?
In 2010 I decided on the name TumbleBee while I was driving and a bee flew through the window. It was a fun name, I think. I initially released it under that name, however I had to change it with 1.2 to comply with Tumblr's API license agreement. At first I wanted to call it Posts, but because that already existed, I decided to name it Postr (with analogy to Tumblr's missing vowel).
What obstacle did you encounter while developing your application?
I knew from the beginning I wanted to make a scrolling posts view that displays full posts. Not some excerpt with small thumbnails, but actual posts. This meant that I would have to render HTML content. There were two choices for that: use a UIWebView component or parse and draw content myself. Initially I decided to do a web view, but that quickly turned out to be a mistake. I had to move quickly to make a completely native app. I put a lot of work in it and it is still evolving. It includes everything from efficient HTML validation and parsing to layouting and performant drawing. It may not seem like much when you take a glance on the app, but there is some really crazy stuff going on inside.
How is your application internally built? How do you do data persistence? Did you try Core Data?
I like to build code in blocks and then assemble it. It makes development much easier and code easier to maintain. It's not a coincidence that I happened to play a lot with Lego blocks while I was growing up. For Postr I built a library that interacts with Tumblr and uses Core Data for persistence. I also have another library for everything dealing with HTML. These are the heart and lungs of Postr.
How would you qualify the Tumblr API? Was it difficult for you to learn?
When I started almost a year ago, the API wasn't really good. Since then, Tumblr has made it much better. I would however love a better documentation for some endpoints. Being left in the dark for some things might have been the biggest difficulty for me, but you eventually get around it.
Are you using open source libs in Postr? Which one? Were they difficult to integrate?
I'm most thankful for AFNetworking, because it saved me a whole lot of time. Right now, it's the best available networking library. Also, I use SSKeychain and SSPullToRefresh by Sam Soffes. SSPullToRefresh, which I use for iOS 5 users, is in my opinion the best way to do a custom pull to refresh view. There are also some low-level C libraries I use for HTML and Markdown manipulation.
Are you planning to develop other iOS apps?
I have plans and ideas, but that's all they are at the moment.
What if Tumblr release their own iPad app, are you afraid of this possibility?
Honestly, no. I would welcome it, because I am extremely interested in their take on it. I think their current iPhone app is really good and getting better with every release, even though internally it uses web views to display content. Compared to the old Facebook app, it runs much smoother. Also, more app choices is always better for users. The innovation obviously thrives in a saturated market. App abundance is one of the strongest points of iOS platform.
Are you satisfied with sales of your application so far?
I would say that I am. Considering that I haven't done any marketing and that the app initially lacked many Tumblr features, I sold enough copies for me to be able to push development to the next level. This was actually the whole point of 1.0.
Do they cover development costs? If not, is this a concern for you?
They covered my life costs, but now I am in a desperate need of a new computer. I developed Postr on a 2007 MacBook Pro, but I'll finally be able to replace it with a faster machine. From this standpoint, I think it is extremely important to do well. You cannot keep developing without profit, especially if an app is your only source of income. On the other hand, I wouldn't say that not being able to cover development costs is a concern of mine. If Postr wouldn't sell, then I couldn't further invest in it and I'd probably be forced to move on to another project. You really need a pragmatic approach to software development, otherwise you're wasting time.
How did you promote Postr?
When I first released the app, I really didn't have any marketing budget at all. I relied solely on the App Store. I sent a promotional code to some bloggers and I was really lucky to receive a reply from Patrick Rhone of (Minimal Mac)[http://minimalmac.com]. He is a great guy and he wrote a short blog post on his Tumblr blog. This got the app some spotlight. I hope to be able to do some kind of promotion in the future though. I think the app is really great and people should know about it.
Postr 1.2 is available here on the App Store for 2.99$