Adventures in Swift and iOS App Development
There's many ways to handle errors in Swift. For some errors, using throws is a great way to handle errors without crashing the system. Download the exercise file. You'll find a project with an embedded playground. While there's a lot better ways to do this, I'll use an example of a function coffee(name:) that finds …
A video of this tip can be found on LinkedIn Learning User Interfaces often use shadows to make them look less flat, but it isn't obvious how to add one to a view on your app. In this tip, I’ll show you how to make shadows using the CALayer found in UIViews, and a few …
In the good old days, Apple used a lot of rounded corner buttons. Many developers use several images to get the effect of round buttons. The CALayer of UIButton does have a feature for you to easily get rounded corners, and even circular buttons. Download the code from GitHub and open the starter file. It …
The song says time is on my side, but I sometimes I wonder about that when trying to work with the time types in iOS. Let me show you some of the time types. In Xcode, Open up a blank playground. There are two primary types for working with time: TimeInterval and Date. Add this …
A few months ago, Apple threw out my app Interval Runcalc for being too old. While it wasn't the most innovative, complex or profitable, it was an app I used frequently myself. It was a calculator for time, pace and distance for running not only for straight runs but for the run/walk/run community who use multiple-speed …
In this lesson, we’ll take a look at tab bar controllers and how to add them in the storyboard. For more on implementing them completely in code see Swift Swift: Using Tab Bar Controllers in Swift. For more on data sharing once set up in the storyboard, see Passing Data in Tab Bar controllers The …
Continue reading "Tab Bar Controllers in Xcode 8 Storyboards"
With the launch of the Apple Watch it's time for timers in iOS and WatchKit. Learning to use timers is a very important skill for most developers. There are many places we need to schedule regular intervals of time to do things. In my WatchKit series I'm writing a workout interval timer which tells the …
Continue reading "Swift Swift: Using NSTimer to Make a Timer or Alarm"
[Updated to Swift 2.0/iOS9 9/21/15 SJL] While Navigation controllers often have the limelight when it comes to Xcode controllers, Tab Bar controllers are great for independent tasks in the same app or for different ways of working with the same model. In this lesson, we’ll take a look at tab bar controllers and how to …
In our first installment, we added a label and set up a clock. We could easily do that with a story board and a wired up label. The point of series this is to have a lot of cool animation running in Sprite Kit for a non game UI. We will begin to add animation …
Continue reading "Make a Clock in Sprite Kit: Adding Animation to the Clock"
Build a Better Obstacle In the SlippyFlippy challenge we have a small obstacle. In Flappy Bird there are two obstacles which the bird has to pass between. Let’s change our current obstacle into a pass-through obstacle like Flappy Bird. Make a Random Obstacle Our current obstacle is a bit boring. It always shows up …
Continue reading "The SlippyFlippy Challenge: Make a Better Obstacle in Sprite Kit"
