Welcome to our weekly roundup! When Apple introduced Auto Layout in iOS 6, I put it through its paces and quickly decided it was too much of a pain to struggle with, especially given that it would prevent me from shipping the apps in question on iOS 5. (harder to use, can’t produce layouts that look good, won’t work on older operating systems…Umm, pass.) But, circumstances change, and I would very strongly recommend to anyone building iOS apps today to adopt Auto Layout immediately.
Luckily, the intervening year has produced a number of tools and libraries for making Auto Layout easier, like our control of the week, Masonry. I highly recommend checking it out. I’ll have a lot more to say about Auto Layout in the weeks ahead, and please drop us a line if there’s anything in particular you’d like to learn about it.
Best,
Aaron
What We’re Reading
- How to transition app designs to iOS 7
- New in RubyMotion: Blocks Rewrite, Retain Cycle Detection, Better Crash Reporting
- More Git and GitHub Secrets
- Ruby Warrior – It’s Ruby, not Objective-C, but this is well worth 20 minutes of your time. (Turn down your speakers before opening the page!)
App of the Week
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The author of this app was generous enough to release the source code to it under the permissive MIT license. It’s a great way to get a holistic view of how to build a network-enabled iOS app. Hackers is a beautifully elegant app for Hacker News, a social news website about tech start ups and computer hacking. |
Control of the Week
Masonry
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A light-weight layout framework which makes creating iOS AutoLayout NSLayoutConstraints in code quick, readable and descriptive. MIT licensed. |
Weekly Roundup
MSCellAccessory
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UITableViewCell accessoryType can easily customizing the colors. Supported iOS7 Flat Design. BSD licensed. |
JTOpenDoorAnimatedViewController
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A single View Controller that mimics the startup animation of the AskKing Quizz app. Requires XCode 4.5. MIT licensed. |
KOPopupView
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Popup UIView for iPhone/iPad in both orientations with nice effect. MIT licensed. |
CLTableWithFooterViewController
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Easily add a stationary footer image when you reach the bottom of your UIScrollView or UITableView. Scroll back up to make it disappear. MIT licensed. |
MMProgressHUD
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An easy to use HUD interface with personality. MIT licensed. |
RMMapper
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TRSDialScrollView
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A highly customizable UIScollView dial control. MIT licensed. |
JWToolbarAdaptiveSpaceItem
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A spacer item for NSToolbars that can automatically resize itself to match an adjacent NSSplitView or other pane-like setup. BSD licensed. |
SLGSlideShowView
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Simple Image Slide Show for displaying images with UITableView like datasource and delegate MIT licensed. |
PBJVision
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iOS camera engine, supports touch-to-record video and photo capture. MIT licensed. |
SWScrollView
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Scroll view like Star Wars opening crawl. MIT licensed. |
DAContextMenuTableViewController
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A UITableViewController subclass with “more” accessory view, that looks and behaves similarly to the one in the native mail app. MIT licensed. |