13. February 2014

iOS, customising top and bottom bar inside UINavigationController

This may seem a difficult or simple task, depending upon what and how you want to do it.
UINavigationController is simply a controller to manage all the UIViewControllers inside it. Now, customising each and every UIViewController could be done by code or InterfaceBuilder, depending upon what you want to achieve. We will be seeing here, as to how, to customise the Navigation bar (top bar) and the Tab bar (bottom bar) of the respective UIViewController. These are the references to look for while customising UIViewController through InterfaceBuilder.
Hide the Tab bar (bottom bar)

The above setting is on the same [UIViewController][2]. To display custom text on the back button in a UIViewController, look for the setting as below Just remember that the above setting is done on the `previous` [UIViewController][2] for the next [UIViewController][2], `its tricky` that way. Now the code reference for [UIViewController][2] is as below.

Happy customising.

12. February 2014

iOS fragmentation and UI development

It was not there 4 years back, when the iOS was just beginning its life. Whether you like it or not the truth is its fragmented now. There are all different versions of iOS, then different versions of the devices. These two itself bring a lot of different considerations, while developing for the platform now.
Its agreed that its less fragmented but then thats enough to bring in the pain to a frontend developer.
Now, to add to it, there are different device form factors. Starting with regular iPads, retina, air, mini, iphone, ipod touch and all have different specifications. So the point is, the XCode workflow allows one to design for all different devices, that does mean design is multiplied not reduced. While its good and freedom to the UI designer, as a frontend developer one must keep an eye on all these form fragmentations. Now the same code will produce, a different looking back button in an older iOS and a different looking one in the newer ones. The UI may hide some UI elements on a smaller heighted device and look perfect in a newer bigger iPhone/iPodTouch.
Thats doable but definitely increases time to implement UI, if its not designed, and well thought of, by people, who know what they are doing.
Happy designing.

11. February 2014

jQuerymobile, changePage is deprecated as of 1.4.0, will be removed in 1.5.0.

This is really going to break things, if someone is updating the library to latest version. This is a very frequently used function and chances are, that, in a mobile web application its being used everywhere. Lets remind ourselves again that jQuery.mobile.changePage is deprecated as of 1.4.0 and will be removed in 1.5.0. Now there are vaious ways to change page in a jQuerymobile application. Here are the 3 options to do the page change in the new API.

$(":mobile-pagecontainer").pagecontainer("change", "target", { options });
//or
$.mobile.pageContainer.pagecontainer("change", "target", { options });
//or
$("body").pagecontainer("change", "target", { options });

Here is the official document for reference

Happy coding.