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.
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.
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Tutorial: Texturing 3D Objects In OpenGL ES 2.0
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
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.
The tutorial is from Jen Gordon who’s set of beginner native iOS app design tutorials I previously mentioned.
You can find the tutorial here:
Create An HTML/CSS Mobile Web App Using Sencha Touch
You can test out an expanded version of the app built in the tutorial here (use your iPhone):
http://senchalearn.github.com/roookies/?style=demo
This information is great to know not just for web apps, but a useful guide if you plan on creating a native app using a wrapper framework like Phonegap.
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.
Politics aside, it provides an example of an app that retrieves and organizes data from an online source, and there is also a Phonegap version if you are looking for any html/javascript enthusiasts out there looking for a starting point trying to build with Phonegap.
You can find the source code for the newer native version here:
https://github.com/sunlightlabs/realtimecongress-ios
The source code for the previous Phonegap version can be found here:
https://github.com/sunlightlabs/real_time_congress-iphone_html
You can find the app on iTunes here.
I’ll be adding it to the list of open source apps soon.
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.
I recently came across a build script that alleviates all that pain so you can have OpenCV installed for iOS devices automatically, and it’s been updated to support OpenCV 2.2.9. The build script is from Khvedchenya Eugene and in the second part he writes on getting started with OpenCV in Objective-C.
Update: If you don’t mind precompiled binaries Khvedchenya has a precompiled iOS binary also available of OpenCV 2.3RC (thanks for telling me Tom!).
You can find Khvedchenya’s tutorials here:
Building OpenCV For iPhone In One Click
Using OpenCV In Objective-C Code
You can find the Github for the most recent version of the build script here:
https://github.com/BloodAxe/OpenCV-iOS-build-script
[UPDATE] For those interested in OpenCV 2.3 pre-compiled binary:
OpenCV 2.3 Release Candidate Is Available
If you ever want to dabble in augmented reality on iOS devices this is a great help.