Hiding between the cracks, best of WWDC 2015 news bits

Most people that follow WWDC keynotes are not developers, and are looking for new products or OS features. Most news sites do not list key developer things. There where several blips however that where not talk about in depth that where major things great for developers. In case anyone missed it, 3 things jump out as major developer wows.

First the release of Swift version 2.0 with many major improvements. Several are outlined here at apple swift blog

Second Swift is now open source, and will support Apples iOS, Mac and also Linux. With more platform support to come in the future. The source code will include swift compiler and standard library among other things.

Last and almost under the radar. The consolidation of Mac and iOS developer programs into one thing. Saving money for developers each year.

Saving money if you where like me and had to pay for both iOS and Mac developer programs annually for the past 5 years.

I still like to see for them to remove the annual fee altogether in the future. As Apple takes 30% commission from selling developers apps. That high commission should cover the fee for the program alone. As every other app store before Apple, only tock under 9% commission from selling developers apps.

Still it is a move in the right direction.

Adding a no animation segue to iOS

If you want a view to just appear without any animation or transition in iOS then this quick tip for you. First off you do not have to code a custom segue like is suggested on several sites. All that is required is selecting the correct preset segue type and changing a simple setting. Selecting Present Modally and unchecking the Animates checkbox. That all that is needed to have the new view just appear without any animation or transition. That much easier than writing a custom segue.

If you need to see how to do this then watch this short little video;



Thanks and happy coding :)

iOS Xcode Auto layout device preview

When layout of a unversial app in Xcode for iOS, there a way to preview the unverisal layout on all apple device sizes within Xcode at the same time.

I been working with Xcode Swift with several companies and pretty much all of them never knew this could be done. It is a great little tip and I felt it is worth sharing with the world.




Enjoy and happy coding ;)

Livecodes 8 Media Buzz

I started hearing all this buzz about a new Livecode. Like it was a new dawn, mountains where going to be moved, lives where going to be changed and the future was now. There was talk around the world about Livecode 8 so much that one would think alien life landed on the earth last week.

With this kind of media attention, they sure want us to take notice. Usually I would see d.p., alpha, beta as words not ready for release. However Livecode yelled as loud as they could, look at me! look at Livecode 8, Talk about it.

OK lets do this, take a journey with me to my mac desktop. A video screen cast of Livecode 8 and all of its media buzz, they unleashed at this point in time on this product.

I however could not get anything to work. There no UI items in the tool palette and no properties. I ask around if anyone else where seeing these problems also, many where but some say they where not.

I really like the idea what this could do, specially for Android. However I just can not get it to work.

Watch the video below:




Thanks and happy coding ;)

--

Edited: If you comment on this please no cyber bullies. I already had a threaten response over this video, and a few others call me several other foul words (which I will not re post) over this video. That pretty crazy.

Just imagine if your self had similar issues as I did. With this tool or any other. (Like in this video.) Imagine trying to get help and have people be absolute thugs over something so little as documenting something not working.

We had users of our apps before video document bugs. Guess what our response was. Thank you for sharing, we will fix that as soon as we can. 

Make a custom button with Xojo canvas

Today we look at another Xojo canvas example on how to make a very simple custom button.
Our simple button will draw a button on screen with text that resizes and centers as the window resizes. Also will show how to add a very simple button states and add simple effects on which state is active. The sky really the limit with the canvas object in Xojo. We just touch the surface here, and show how simple it can be to get started making some custom UI elements such as a button with Xojo.

 Check out the video:

If your on iOS device (The video quality is better if you watch va the YouTube app.) here the link




Thanks and Happy coding ;)

Xojo draw image to follow mouse

Another look at the Xojo Canvas object.

This time where going to show how simple it is to draw a image to screen to follow the mouse. We made a simple video for that because it easier to see how it works many times more than read about it.




For Xojo canvas docs for desktop: look here
For Xojo graphics doc for desktop: look here


Thanks and happy coding ;)

Converting file url to and from strings with swift

There times where you need to display a file url as a string. This might be to display a list of files into a Table View or even a field. 

Below is a custom function I made to do this. It takes one parameter a NSURL and returns a string as a absolute file path

func myFileString(theFile: NSURL) -> String {

return theFile.absoluteString

}

And if you need to convert the string as a absolute file path back to a NSURL this custom function does that. It takes one parameter a string as a absolute file path.

func myFileStringURL(tFileString: String) -> NSURL {

return NSURL(fileURLWithPath: tFileString!)

}

As you can see not very hard, but useful. Making custom functions for later reuse of code for future project can be helpful. These work for Swift and Mac OS X with Swift v 1.1

Thanks, and happy coding ;)

Xojo still choose for crossplatform apps

Many are confused that I stop using Xojo, I never stopped using Xojo. Many of the jobs of making in-house software for companies require Mac, Windows and Linux. For that I still use Xojo.

Over the years I used many different languages and tools from Ruby, Python, Javascript, C#, Lua and more. Just because I decided to start using Swift for iOS and some Mac apps for things, does not  mean I stopped using Xojo.

I had some issues recently with Xojo and my active license not working. After contacting support by email everything was fixed. It is working again.

Another aspect of why I chosen to use Swift is that I would like to put myself in the market to code Swift projects for others. I done this in the past with Unity, where I was hired to help program other companies games in exchange for cash. I also been hired to help program with Livecode, Python, Ruby, Javascript, Xojo and etc projects. It how I currently make a living.

Selling software does not support my family, however programming part of a team as a freelancer does. More languages I know how to code in is a major plus getting more work.

My blog here is about making cool things with code, and I will show many different things and different tools and programming languages.

Hope that clears up the confusion. We usually only made 15 post a year. 2015 we already are past that with ten more months to go. Meaning more content is coming and it will not all be Swift. More Xojo, Livecode and who knows what else will be pack along with Swift for this year.

So stick around I be post other stuff soon.