iPhone Programming Tutorials

Tutorial: A Colored Lens On A Black And White Background With Core Graphics

You have likely noticed the effect in many different applications where the area showing what the user has currently selected is in color, and the unselected area is black and white.  It may be a small detail, but it could give your app or game an extra amount of polish.

Tutorial: Creating An Evernote Style Button Activated Keyboard

The Evernote app is an excellent note taking app for iOS devices (and the Mac platform).  It is also very easy to use and well designed.  One of the features within the Evernote app is a keyboard button which allows you to hide and show the keyboard when pressed.

Tutorial: Building Complete Games With SpriteHelper And LevelHelper

I’ve previously mentioned the excellent SpriteHelper and LevelHelper tools.   These tools work with Cocos2d, Cocos2D X, and Corona SDK games and allow to quickly add graphics design levels, and physics to your games with drag-and-drop and parameter selection.

Together these tools are a very powerful combination, and save an incredible amount of time – while being pretty inexpensive.  You can build your own games very quickly.  I’ve always liked, but then run into issues whenever using drag’n'drop game dev tools.  What I love about these tools is that you get the ease of development, but can still do whatever you want in code.

Tutorial: Using And Building OpenCV (Open Computer Vision) On iOS Devices

If you have any interest in computer vision or augmented reality with marker detection then you have probably heard of OpenCV, the Open Source Computer Vision library for real time computer vision.

There are many apps, and some augmented reality libraries (even commercial ones) that use the BSD licensed OpenCV.  However, building for iOS was a real pain, and for awhile it almost seemed like some wanted to keep the entire process secret (can’t really blame them!).  I mentioned a tutorial that explained the process but definitely didn’t make things easy.

Tutorial: Calculator App Style Glossy Buttons With Core Graphics

In the past I’ve posted about creating iOS style buttons mentioning this tool, and this library which allow you to draw glossy buttons similar to those found in most iOS apps.

The basic calculator app however has different buttons.  They have a rounded gloss at the top, and a steady gradient all the way down the button.  You may have noticed when using the app that when you press the buttons there is a much more noticeable effect as the button look seems to reverse giving the impression that the finger has caused the button to reverse.