Blocks are a feature of the C language that have been added to the iPhone and iPad sdk with iOS 4.

What they allow you to do are create usable “blocks” of code that you can pass along like any object. This probably sounds a lot like a function, and they are very similar, but there is a significant difference in that they “close” around variables that are in scope before a block is declared.

I know this sounds odd, and you might be wondering when you’ll need to use them, but they certainly have their uses as there are definitely times when you will want a small block of reusable code.

You can find a complete tutorial from Mike Clark here that explains things better here:
Using Blocks In iOS 4

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[Via Joost Schuur]

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Learning iPhone and iPad development can definitely be difficult, especially if you are not a professional software developer.

I receive e-mails every few days from people who tell me they’ve bought a book or number of books on Amazon or at the local bookstore.  Unfortunately most of the “Beginner” material is meant for experienced developers who are new to the iPhone or iPad platform.

If you’re a real beginner without any program experience you might need to take a step back and look for teachings from a different perspective.

A friend of mine told me about a book that they’d been using by Dr. Rory Lewis, in his book he mentions some screencasts that he has used to help teach students at the University of Colorado.  They look great for the absolute beginner and if you’ve been struggling and just want to get your foot in the door I suggest checking them out. These don’t get into very advanced material, but are very accessible and high quality. You can find the screencasts here.

The book Dr. Lewis mentioned these screencasts in (although he does mention on his website you don’t need to buy it) is available here.

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We all know Facebook is a massive database providing a wide variety of information about hundreds of millions of people, and the Facebook app has been tremendously popular on the app store.

Accessing the “Facebook Social Graph” can be done through the Facebook graph API, Facebook Connect was provided to give developers the ability to connect their apps with the Facebook database, but pales in comparison to the Facebook Graph API.

Ray Wenderlich has written a couple of excellent tutorials utilizing the Facebook Graph API, this is an ongoing tutorial series which features:

• How to authenticate the Facebook user using Oath
• Getting profile information
• Uploading Photos
• Posting to the user’s wall
• And more..

The tutorials (so far) can be found here:

How To Use Facebook’s New Graph API from your iPhone App – featuring how to connect to the Facebook graph API, and authenticate the user.

How To Get a User Profile with Facebook’s New Graph API from your iPhone App – How to gather profile data from the Facebook graph api using ASIHttpRequest, and parse the data using the JSON framework.

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Many put off using basic core animation and uikit as a way of making games almost by default.

The fact of the matter is that core animation is probably the easiest way to create a game on iOS. With a more complicated game you will run into performance issues,  but for many games it works just fine, and you can lay things out in interface builder.. perfect for someone just starting out since the concepts will work across different UIKit interface components.

I found this great tutorial for beginners from Tudor Munteanu that is worth checking out covering basic touch and animation which you can find here:
Learning About Touch Events And Basic Game Animation

There is a small error in the code, and just in case it hasn’t been fixed yet you need to change the lines:

To:

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Thanks for visiting, things have continued to accelerate in the iPhone and iPad developer blogging world.  It seems like each week there is more and more great content being put out.  I am continuing to look through, and filter for the good stuff to share with you, and I still have a lot to look through.

If you have a resource that you would like to share then you can submit it. This site received about 40,000 page views in the last week according to Google analytics, and I try to give submitted content priority.  I also like to give priority to those who are new, have linked back or have shared content from this site on Twitter.

Anyways, here are the resources from 7/10-7/16 in order of popularity and sharing!

How To Program A Fully Functional iOS Photo Viewer Quickly With Three20
A great tutorial from Ray Wenderlich on using the photo viewer in the uber handy Three20 open source library.

3 Great Tutorials For Beginning iOS Developers
Three great tutorials for beginners from Nick Vellios.

Drag-In Straightforward Pathfinding Library For iOS Game Developers
An excellent open-source library for adding pathfinding into iPhone and iPad games from the creator of ASIHttpRequest.

Programming A Non-Fullscreen iOS Movie Player That Even Runs In Portrait
A handy code snippet from John Muchow on creating a movie player that works in portrait mode, and doesn’t automatically go full screen.

4 Ridiculously Handy Custom iPhone UI Tricks and Libraries
Four very handy code snippets from Hans Pinckaers for UIKit user interface builders.

How To Add Turn Based Multiplayer Into Your iPhone Games Easily With Openfeint
A nice tutorial on how to easily implement turn based multiplayer using Openfeint from Kwigbo.

Glossy iPhone Buttons Without Images Or Private APIs
A very nice open source library for adding glossy colored iPhone buttons that can be laid out using interface builder from Hwee-Boon Yar.

Using Objective-C JSON To Do Translations In An iOS App
Another great tutorial from Ray Wenderlich this time on using JSON with Google Translate to add translations into an iPhone app.

Easily Accommodate Different iOS Versions With This Clean Code
A nice tutorial with sample code showing how to accomodate different versions of iOS with uglifying your code.

That’s it – If you liked something on this list, please share it!

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I am a huge fan of multiplayer games.  Especially on the iPhone… in fact at one time I did consider starting an app review site just for multiplayer games.  The nature of multiplayergaming could also cause your game to go viral.

What I don’t like about multiplayer games is handling all the small details such as building a lobby for the players to find each other through, and making sure all the small details work.  And in the end with an indie title you may not even know if there will be players who will play it multiplayer.

Fortunately OpenFeint has made this considerably easier when they added turn based multiplayer to their already extremely popular social gaming platform on iOS devices.

Kwigbo, developer of the open source game Artifice (listed in our open source iphone app listing) has created a straightforward tutorial showing the code that he uses within his game which you can find here:
OpenFeint Multiplayer In Artifice

The tutorial features code showing you how to use OpenFeint in order to:

• Create a new game
• Find open games
• Challenge friends
• Take turns
• And More…

Some details about OpenFeint’s multiplayer capability are stated here:
http://www.openfeint.com/ofdeveloper/index.php/kb/article/000074

This looks like a very nice and easy to add turn based multiplayer into your games.

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Last week I posted about a button making tool that utilizes the hidden UIGlassButton class in order to make the sexy colored glass buttons that are common in Apple created applications.

Having to create these buttons was something I was doing at the time, and it surprised me that many others seemed to be doing the same thing.

I was asked by a couple of people if that class was really safe to use, and it was because all you were doing was saving the buttons, and then using them in your own apps — it is perfectly alright since you would just be using png files, but Hwee-Boon has submitted an even easier solution.

The solution is a set of classes that utilize core animation to create the buttons so that no private APIs are used.

What makes this solution easier is that you can just use interface builder and then add in one line of code to set up how you would like the button to look.  No need to export png’s, and load them in.  You can also set them up using code.

The solution along with sample code can be found on Github here:
http://github.com/hboon/GlassButtons

1. In the interface builder declare the buttons as IBOutlet UIMOButton as opposed to IBOutlet UIButton.
2. Create your buttons with the UIRoundedRect type, and link them to the UIMOButtons you declared making sure the class identity is set to MOGlassButton.
3. When the xib is loaded execute the appropriate method for color and size ie. setupAsGreenButton setupAsSmallGreenButton.

Overall the code is very easy to follow, and looking at the demo project you can easily see exactly how things are done.

You can see in the screenshot below how things can easily be laid out in interface builder and the results including some buttons layed out using code:

Be sure to check out Hwee-Boon’s Posterous for further details (or to just say thanks):
Glass Buttons in iPhone Apps Without Using Image Files

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Photo viewers are common in so many different apps, however programming a photo viewer with all the desired functionality such as zooming, and flicking is somewhat tedious.

This is where the cool Three20 library comes in which I’ve mentioned several times on this site.

Unfortunately several of the guides that were available on using this library have now disappeared, and because of that many have not been introduced to the tremendous versatility of this great open source library.

Fortunately for us all Ray Wenderlich has created a great step-by-step guide to using the Three20 photo viewer (TTPhotoViewController).

The guide goes through everything that you can do with the Three20 photo viewer and starts at the beginning showing you how to implement the class in your projects all through sourcing your photos, and displaying the final result.

You can check out the guide on Ray’s website at:
How To Use The Three20  Photo Viewer

You can also find some more guides on using Three20 here:
Getting The Most Out Of The Three20 iOS Library

Btw, if you’ve written an iOS programming guide feel free to submit it, or a link to it here and if I think the readers will like it I’ll feature it on the site in front of our 2,000+ daily visitors.

[Source: Ray Wenderlich]

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A blog carnival that is!

If you haven’t heard the term before a blog carnival is a collection of posts from different blogs related to a specific topic that which links to are posted on one blog.

Now the reason why this is cool is two-fold:

1. Driving visitors to a developer blog can be tough.  And this can be a terrific way  to drive traffic to a site with minimal effort. More visitors can mean more sales and more money which is probably why you are developing in the first place.
2. It’s a great way to get information and insights into iOS development, and make connections with other iPhone developers.

The carnival was started by @mysterycoconut on Twitter (I guess it is more of a theme park since the carnival stays in one place), and is hosted at idevblogaday.com.  You can contact him to get on the waiting list if you’d like to submit a post.

Don’t forget ManiacDev.Com also takes in submissions of tutorials, tips, tools, and libraries which I will blog about here in front of the 2k+ daily visitors giving you a permanent link.

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Twitter is a great way to find great developers sharing useful information. Even if you don’t want to spend the time there Twitter Search and Topsy are terrific ways to get the goods.

Just today I was on Twitter, and found a great post from Bob Sealy illustrating some great information that he had found on Twitter.

This information includes:

• How to handle double sized images on the iPhone 4
• Getting a speed boost by clearing the OpenGL ES color buffer before rendering
• Hot loading game assets
• Reverting your iOS device to previous builds
• and more…

Check it out, you can find the article here:
The Things I Learn From Twitter Amaze Me

And to all the Americans reading (well everyone else too!) have a Happy Independence Day!

Btw, if you’ve written an article feel free to submit it, or a link to it here and if I think the readers will like it I’ll feature it on the site in front of our 2,000+ daily visitors.

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