Another week gone by, and welcome to this listing of resources shared in the last week in order of popularity.

This week once again yet another beta was released of iOS 5 for us to install.  The release date is slowly creeping up.

Some great resources were posted on the site including open source libraries for interface improvement, free game graphic sources, and some excellent tutorials.

If you would like us to submit a resource you can do so on the submit page.

Open Source: Drop In UILabel Replacement For Beautiful Text Easily - A library utilizing NSAttributedString, and core text allowing you to quickly create labels with styled text.

Design: Free Game Graphic Sets Made Specifically For iOS Games - Some great looking sets of game art styled specifically or the iPhone and iPad complete with backgrounds, characters and game objects.

Tutorial: Easy Game Controls In Cocos2D With SneakyInput - Describes how to use the SneakyInput library in your Cocos2D game so you can quickly add a virtual joystick.

Tutorial: Using And Building OpenCV (Open Computer Vision) On iOS Devices - Tutorial along with a build script for those looking to use the OpenCV library in their apps.

Open Source: Behavioral Driven Development Testing Framework - A framework made with Objective-C and specifically for Objective-C apps enabling BDD testing.

Tutorial: Objective-C Blocks (Closures) For Beginners - The basics of using Objective-C blocks including an overview of using them in concurrency programming.

Tutorial: Building Complete Games With SpriteHelper And LevelHelper - A couple of tutorials on the usage of these excellent tools to quickly build games with Cocos2D and Corona.

Open Source: Real-Time Congress App Phonegap And Native Source Code - The source code to both a Phonegap and native app that displays real time data.

Tutorial: Texturing 3D Objects In OpenGL ES 2.0 - An excellent step-by-step tutorials for beginners to OpenGL ES demonstrating how to Texture 3D objects.

Design: Creating An App with HTML/CSS And Sencha Touch - A tutorial on how to design iPhone style interfaces with HTML/CSS and Sencha Touch.

Thanks for reading, please bookmark and share this post!

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

OpenGL ES is a topic that I’ve posted about many times on this site, and I’ve been trying to keep a categorized list of OpenGL ES tutorials up to date with every OpenGL ES tutorial I’ve seen.  There have not been too many OpenGL ES 2.0 tutorials to date that go beyond the absolute basics.

Previously I mentioned a good series on OpenGL ES 2.0 that gave a great overview on beginner through advanced topics with some sample code.  I also mentioned a great hands on beginners OpenGL ES 2.0 tutorial from Ray Wenderlich, the creator of the Space Game Starter Kit and co-author of the Learning Cocos2D book,.

Ray has continued on with his tutorial series, and added another tutorial explaining how to texture objects in OpenGL ES 2.0 on iOS devices.  Texturing may sound like something simple, but the process of loading in the textures, and extracting the data from memory makes things somewhat stick on the iPhone and iPad.

You can find the tutorial here:
OpenGL ES 2.0 for iPhone Tutorial Part 2: Textures

Definitely some very handy snippets of code if you ever need to do your own texturing in OpenGL ES 2.0.

Added To The: Categorized OpenGL ES Tutorial Collection

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Another excellent week to be an iOS developer, and some big news in the department of iOS game development with the release of  Cocos2D V1.0.0 and the opening of the Moai SDK beta to everyone.  Also some great open source libraries and tutorials were shared.

If you have written a tutorial, open source library or tool that you would like to share you can submit the url here.

I’ve been contacted a number of times about advertising on this site so I decided to add support for BuySellAds, and added a section for small button ads.  If interested you can check out the advertising page here.

Here are the resources from the last week in order of popularity:

Open Source: Easy Multistroke and Single Stroke Complex Gesture Recognition On iOS - A couple of great libraries if you are looking to quickly implement complex gesture within your app.

Open Source: iCade Library For Easy Integration In iOS Games - Library that allows you to easily support the iCade classic arcade box/controller for iPad.  Makes a good example if you are trying to support a specific bluetooth interfacing device.

Tutorial: Manipulating Images With Touch Gestures - A tutorial with sample code demonstrating how to add touch features for image manipulation.

Tutorial: iOS Map Kit For Beginners Guide - A getting started tutorial for those beginning with the iOS map kit including a tutorial on displaying data from XML locations on a map without using any libraries outside of those included with  the iOS SDK.

Open Source: Active Record For Core Data Library - A great open source project modeled after Ruby On Rail’s ActiveRecord for more straightforward data retrieval.

News: Cocos2D Game Engine v1.0.0 Released - News about the highly popular Cocos2D game engine finally reaching the v1.0.0 release.

Tutorial: iOS Multithreading With Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) Basics - An excellent step by step guide beginning with the basics on multithreading with iOS ‘s Grand Central Dispatch.

News: Moai SDK Game Development Kit Made Available To All - The lua based open source Moai SDK has now opened the beta for anyone to download and use.

Tutorial: Calculator App Style Glossy Buttons With Core Graphics - An explanation of the technique used to create buttons just like the calculator applications that come with iOS devices.

Tutorial: How To Use The iOS Keychain To Store Names And Passwords - A guide on using the iOS keychain in order to securely store usernames and passwords.

Thanks for reading, please bookmark and share this post!

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

The iPad has created quite a market for bluetooth peripherals and one of the coolest has to be the iCade.

The iCade is a mini arcade cabinet which you can fit your iPad within, and comes with a classic arcade style joystick, and buttons.  The iCade uses bluetooth so it can actually work with other tablets or even with your desktop.  I’ve almost talked myself into getting one by writing this article.

If you are unfamiliar with the iCade you can check out this video:

A pretty cool device, and at the cost of $99 you can imagine those using it are pretty hardcore iPad classic game enthusiasts.

Stuart Carnie has created a library for easy integration in iOS games, and includes a sample app.

You can find the project on Github here:
https://github.com/scarnie/iCade-iOS

You can check out the iCade on ThinkGeek here:
 iCade – Arcade Game Cabinet

The peripheral seems to have gained quite a following, and being able to advertise your game with iCade support might drive up it’s popularity.  Easy to do with this open source library.

[via Alex Curylo]

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

If you’ve ever wondered how to code gesture recognition for complex shapes I’ve come across a couple of open source libraries that should be a great deal of help.  This goes well beyond finger swiping.

This library is based on the $1 gesture recognizer which I remember being discussed quite a bit a few years back because not only did it run efficiently,  but allowed you define the templates to recognize complex shapes very easily.   The $1 gesture recognizer only recognizes 1 single stroke from the user.  The $1 gesture recognizer was later expanded on to become the $N multistroke gesture recognizer.

Brit Gardner has taken the $N gesture recognizer and created an Objective-C implementation of the code.

You can read about complex gesture recognition, and why Brit decided to use the $N gesture recognizer on his site in these posts:

Complex Gesture Recognition in iOS – Part 1: The Research
Complex Gesture Recognition in iOS – Part 2: The Implementation

You can find Brit’s Github for the Objective-C $N gesture recognizer here:

https://github.com/britg/MultistrokeGestureRecognizer-iOS

Adam Preble has created an implementation of the $1 gesture recognizer which can be found here:

https://github.com/preble/GLGestureRecognizer

You can try out the javascript versions, check out the full pseudocode, or download other versions of the gesture recognizers from the University of Washington here:

The $1 Gesture Recognizer
The $N Multistroke Gesture Recognizer

I’ve received e-mails a couple of times over the years asking about how some drawing games were created on the iPhone.  If you are looking to make that kind of game this should help give you a head start.

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

If you’ve developed with Ruby On Rails or similar framework then you are familiar with ActiveRecord, and you are familiar with how useful ActiveRecord is.  I remember thinking how cool it was when I first played with RoR and began using ActiveRecord.

For those unfamiliar with RoR here’s the Wikipedia definition for Active Record:

Active record is an approach to accessing data in a database. A database table or view is wrapped into a class. Thus, an object instance is tied to a single row in the table. After creation of an object, a new row is added to the table upon save. Any object loaded gets its information from the database. When an object is updated the corresponding row in the table is also updated. The wrapper class implements accessor methods or properties for each column in the table or view.

I’ve come across an excellent open source library based on the Ruby On Rails implementation of ActiveRecord from Saul Mora for Core Data retrieval known as MagicalRecord.

You can find the Github for the project along with full instructions here:
https://github.com/magicalpanda/MagicalRecord

You can read Saul’s writeup on the project on his site here:
Magical Panda releases ActiveRecord Fetching for Core Data code library

If you want the full read on Active Record from Wikipedia here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActiveRecord

A very useful library indeed.

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

As a user it can be extremely frustrating if you’re using an application and you have to wait an extended period of time while the application updates.

Sadly this was pretty common when the app store was new.  The devices were slower, the networks were slower, and many apps weren’t using multi-threading in places they probably should have.  I remember becoming frustrated many times using an RSS reader, waiting for the article list to update, and then waiting again for the article to display.

Thankfully Apple introduced Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) with iOS 4.0.

Multithreaded programming with GCD can still be intimidating.  I’ve found a great step-by-step guide which breaks things down into a step by step guide explaining things fully every step of the process of downloading data asynchronously and updating in real time.

The tutorial is from Ray Wenderlich, the creator of the Space Game Starter Kit and co-author of the Learning Cocos2D book, And Can Be Found Here:
Multithreading And Grand Central Dispatch On iOS For Beginners Tutorial

An excellent example of a tutorial that makes a complicated subject seem so simple.

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

A few weeks ago I mentioned the Moai SDK.  An open source iOS game development kit allowing for development of iOS apps (and Android apps) in Lua.  What I really liked about the engine that it has already been used in could be extended to support any functionality within the iOS SDK.

At that time Moai  a limited beta, the beta has been extended now to support all developers.

In order to download the latest SDK release and the cloud services you will need to sign up on the Moai website for the dashboard here:
http://dashboard.moaicloud.com/signup.php

You can find the Github project for the Moai SDK Source here:
https://github.com/moai/moai-beta

The cloud services look great, and very easy to code – if you’re interested be sure to check out their 60 second tutorial here:
60 Second Moai Cloud Tutorial

There are numerous improvements since I first mentioned the SDK. Looks like the guys developing the Moai SDK have been very busy!

Read More: iPhone Dev News

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Another great week has gone by, and if you are a regular visitor to this site you have probably noticed that I am now using a new theme.  Hopefully this betters the user experience for everyone.

In the last week there were some great resources shared, those included a number of open source libraries relating to topics such as Core Text, web services, data storage, and user interface improvements.

Here are the most viewed resources that were new in the last week listed in order of popularity:

Open Source: Lightweight Asynchronous Networking Library For Easy Communication With Web Services – A great lightweight library for communicating with web services allowing you to code complex interactions quickly by taking advantage of Objective-C blocks.

Tutorial: Custom In View Popup Windows – A guide and library for creating popup windows within your main view so that you can display content without needing to navigate to another view.

Open Source: Rich Text-Editing View Using Core Text – A drop in UITextView replacement that allows for easily creating and editing richly formatted text.

Open Source: Library For Easy Data Saving/Loading – A straightforward data saving library allowing you to save or load int, float, and NSString data with just one line of code.

Open Source: UITableView Replacement With Swipeable Cells – A slick UITableView replacement that allows you to create table view cells that can be swiped by the user revealing new content behind the cell.

Open Source: Library Allowing For Tab Bars With An Infinite Number Of Items – A tab bar library that allows you to place an unlimited number of items and allowing the user to scroll between different tab bars accessing the icons without the user having to use the more screen.

Tutorial: Format Text Magazine Style Using Core Text – A great step-by-step tutorial on how to format your text in multiple columns, and format the text with different styles using Core Text.  Excellent for anyone developing a magazine style app.

Open Source: Easily Extensible Objective-C Math Parser Library – A very useful math parsing library that uses similar syntax to NSPredicate but allows you to very easily add new functions.

Open Source: Library And Guide For NinePatch Image Support On iOS Platforms – A libary for support of NinePatch format images that are commonly used for interface elements on Android.

Thanks for reading, please share and bookmark this post!

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Math parsing libraries can be extremely useful whenever you want to evaluate a complex mathematical expression.  In Objective-C you can use NSPredicate.  If you want to extend the functionality of NSPredicate however, this can be extremely difficult.

I came across a math parser that provides many advantages over NSPredicate, and other existing math libraries with in my opinion the key feature being the ease at which you can register new functions.

The library is DDMathParser from DaveDeLong.  The Github for the library can be found here:
https://github.com/davedelong

You can also read Dave’s extensive writeup on the library on his website here:
Parsing Mathematical Expressions

There are many other advantages of using Dave’s library over NSPredicate and other existing math parser’s in his writeup.

Looks like the right choice if you need to go beyond the default functionality provided by NSPredicate.

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.