Open Source: Easy Multistroke and Single Stroke Complex Gesture Recognition On iOS
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.
Open Source: Active Record For Core Data Library
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:
Tutorial: Manipulating Images With Touch Gestures
You’ve already seen this in numerous apps. Images that can be dragged by holding, enlarged, shrunken and rotated with the pinch gesture. All that being said, if you’re new to programming UIGestureRecognizers this can be a somewhat difficult task.
I’ve found a tutorial demonstrating how to easily include this functionality that is immensely useful for many different kinds of photo apps.
There is also an excellent sample project included.
Tutorial: iOS Multithreading With Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) Basics
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.
News: Moai SDK Game Development Kit Made Available To All
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.