Blog

  • NucliOS - What's New in 2013.2

    Torrey Betts

    Introduction

    The 2013 Volume 2 release of NucliOS is packed full of new controls and features to help you easily create stunning apps using Xcode or Xamarin.iOS. Without further ado, the following are the new controls and updates included with this new release.

    IGBulletGraphView (New Control)

    IGBulletGraphView (New Control)

    Deliver a simple and concise view of key performance indicators (KPI) to presents progress towards goals and good…

    • Tue, Nov 19 2013

  • NucliOS Release Notes - November: 13.1.234 Service Release

    Torrey Betts

    Introduction

    With every release comes a set of release notes that reflects the state of resolved bugs and new additions from the previous release. You’ll find the notes useful to help determine the resolution of existing issues from a past release and as a means of determining where to test your applications when upgrading from one version to the next.

    Release Notes: NucliOS 2013 Volume 1 Build 234

    Compo…
    • Fri, Nov 8 2013

  • iOS NSString stringWithFormat: Performance (Objective-C)

    Torrey Betts

    Introduction

    The string functions of most programming languages can cause performance slowdowns when they are frequently used. With iOS development you will see NSString references and its method calls all over the place. It is well known that Objective-C does have a little overhead when compared to C language that it extends because of the Smalltalk style messaging that goes on behind the scenes. In this post we'll measure…

    • Mon, Oct 21 2013

  • Using CAShapeLayer to Create a Switch (Objective-C)

    Torrey Betts

    Introduction

    CALayers are extremely powerful for rendering primitives and geometry, then animating out changes to the geometry or visual properties such as color. In this blog post we'll expand on the flat indicator view post that uses a CAShapeLayer to create a switch similar to UISwitch found in iOS 7. Our switch will take advantage of the automatic animations to transition colors and also reposition the switch to…

    • Wed, Oct 16 2013

  • Using CAShapeLayer to Create a Simple Indicator (Objective-C)

    Torrey Betts

    Introduction

    CALayers are extremely powerful for rendering primitives and geometry, then animating out changes to the geometry or visual properties such as color. In this blog post we'll create a flat indictator view using a CAShapeLayer. With very little code you'll have a control that's great for visualizing on and off states. The illustration below demonstrates the example project when ran. When the indicator has…

    • Tue, Oct 15 2013

  • Quick-Tip: Detecting Smiles Using iOS 7 (Objective-C)

    Torrey Betts

    Introduction

    iOS 7 introduced 2 new detections for faces in images; smiles and eye blinking. This functionality is really useful for developers writing apps that use the camera or process image files and want to detect these characteristics.

    Introduction

    Detecting Smiles and Eye Blinks

    Detecting faces, smiles and eye blinks requires very little code. In the snippet below we figure out the image orientation for later passing…

    • Mon, Oct 14 2013

  • Scanning Barcodes with iOS 7 (Objective-C)

    Torrey Betts

    Introduction

    With the release of iOS 7, Apple included the ability to detect barcodes through its AV Foundation framework. The supported types are:

    • UPC-A
    • UPC-E
    • Code 39
    • Code 39 mod 43
    • Code 93
    • Code 128
    • EAN-8
    • EAN-13
    • Aztec
    • PDF417
    • QR

    Detecting a Barcode

    Detecting a barcode is quite simple. To start, we initialize a capture session, device, input and output. The output sets its delegate for processing of the detections…

    • Thu, Oct 10 2013

  • Dash Documentation Feed for NucliOS 2013.1 API Docs

    Torrey Betts

    Introduction

    Dash is a popular API Documentation Browser and Code Snippet Manager. Dash stores snippets of code and instantly searches offline documentation sets for 80+ APIs. You can even generate your own docsets or request docsets to be included.

    Dash Documentation Browser: http://kapeli.com/dash

    Introduction

    Grab the NucliOS 2013.1 API Feed

    We've used our 2013.1 API docsets from NucliOS to create an unsupported…

    • Thu, Jun 20 2013

  • Quick-Tip: Dividing a CGRect Using CGRectDivide (Objective-C)

    Torrey Betts

    Introduction

    When developing iOS applications without using Interface Builder, you'll always end up with a headache of trying to work out some math to split up and layout your views. One obscure method that helps a ton when working with CGRects is CGRectDivide.

    • void CGRectDivide (CGRect rect, CGRect *slice, CGRect *remainder, CGFloat amount, CGRectEdge edge);


    The CGRectDivide method splits a CGRect into two…

    • Tue, May 28 2013

  • Top 10 Tools for Mac and iOS Development - 2013

    Torrey Betts

    Introduction

    Having the right set of tools can take your development quality to the next level. This article provides you with my personal current top 10 apps to use for Mac and iOS development.

    #1 - AppCode

    #1 - AppCode
    Zoom

    AppCode is a must have IDE for any serious developer on the Mac/iOS platform.

    Features

    • Advanced Coding Assistance
    • Code Generation and Refactorings
    • Code Quality
    • Project and Code Nav…
    • Mon, May 20 2013

  • Quick-Tip: Creating Grid Lines on the IGGridView (Objective-C)

    Torrey Betts

    Introduction

    As of NucliOS 2013 Volume 1, the IGGridView currently does not support column separator lines. Until we add this feature natively, there's a simple workaround you can use to create gridlines.

    Introduction

    Creating the Gridlines

    The idea of the work around consists of using the IGGridView's backgroundColor in combination with the columnSpacing and rowSeparatorHeight properties to create a separation between the…

    • Thu, May 9 2013

  • Quick-Tip: Convert Coordinate System of a UIView

    Torrey Betts

    Introduction

    When performing complex animations during run-time or any task that would require the translation of one UIView's location into that of another UIView, keeping track of the math on your own can be a challenge. Luckily Apple has created a few methods to make conversions simple.

    Converting the Coordinate System

    Converting the Coordinate System

    The conversion of one CGRect's coordinates to another is done by one line of code that…

    • Mon, May 6 2013

  • Custom Axis Labels on iOS Charts (Objective-C and C#)

    Torrey Betts

    Introduction

    When visualizing data and presenting it to your users, the readability of your presentation is key. Users should be able to look at the graphic like a body of text and have an understanding of what is being presented. One key element that provides easier readability are axis labels, in this article we'll cover how to customize the x and y axis labels found on the NucliOS IGChartView.

    The illustration…

    • Thu, Apr 25 2013

  • Using SQLite3 as a Data Source in an Xcode Project (Objective-C)

    Torrey Betts

    Introduction

    One important aspect of almost any application is the data source that provides or store data to the UI elements. In this article we'll wire up the most widely deployed SQL database engine in the world, SQLite, to the IGGridView. In addition you'll learn how to execute a SELECT statement on a SQLite3 database, and turn the results into NSMutableArray of custom objects.

    The illustration below will…

    • Tue, Apr 23 2013