Best Resources In iOS Development – July 25th 2011
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.
Design: Creating An App with HTML/CSS And Sencha Touch
As you probably know there are many frameworks that allow you to develop native iOS apps with the interfaces designed with HTML/CSS.
The big question then is how do you create that app’s interface? Sencha Touch is one possibility.
I’ve found a tutorial that goes into detail on how to design a great looking mobile web app that looks like a native one using HTML/CSS using the Sencha Touch library that looks and feels just like a native app. What I really like about the tutorial is that it goes through the design process step-by-step.
Open Source: Real-Time Congress App Phonegap And Native Source Code
As you may have noticed I like to keep a list on this site of open source ios apps.
Earlier I received a submission of the url to an open source iPhone app that updates on what is happening at the US congress in real time, and provides access to data about members of the US Congress.
Open Source: Orbium Game (HTML5 Based – Available on iPhone/iPad)
Received word about an interesting puzzle game that has been open sourced. It is currently available in the app store and runs on the iPhone/iPad (along with Android, and Palm versions).
What makes Orbium interesting is that this is actually an HTML5 based game, and the app store version runs through the Phonegap framework — and it runs well. The game runs smoothly while animated and beautiful which really shows that the iOS devices and Mobile Safari have come a long way in running html5 apps. There are quite a few games listed on the open source iOS apps list, but this is the first HTML5 based game.
Phonegap And iWebKit Demo (Video and Source)
Randy McMillan sent me information on an example that he has posted this time illustrating the usage of Phonegap and iWebKit.
I have created a short video demoing the example in action:
No knowledge of Objective-C is necessary to create an app using these technologies, and as you can see the look and feel is just like a native application. In the demo the app is running in the simulator as a native app, not in Safari. While action games will suffer a noticeable performance lag, apps that are non-graphically intensive have pretty good performance.