Category: Animation

Using the Swift 4.2 Timer class in Xcode 10

Developers often need to do something many times and at regular intervals. One common application of such a use case is checking some process’s or device’s status, a technique called “polling.” In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to use the Swift 4.2 Timer class in Xcode 10 to repeatedly perform a simple task, every second, for 1 minute (60 seconds) — and update the user interface (UI) on each “tick.” You’ll learn how to start a timer ticking, pause it, resume it, stop it, and do something on each tick. Here’s what we’ll create during this tutorial — and the source code is available for download from GitHub:

To emphasize that the UI remains responsive when a timer is used judiciously, I added a UISlider to my storyboard and tested my code. Here’s the result:

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How drawing works in an Xcode playground

How many of you use freeform drawing in Xcode playgrounds? How many of you understand how drawing in playgrounds work? Xcode playgrounds can serve as great tools for prototyping your in-development apps, whether it be experimenting with algorithms or toying with ideas for app user interfaces. Granted that drawing in playgrounds is not that well documented. So the subject of this tutorial is how drawing in Xcode playgrounds works and a good number of pointers to help you start drawing in playgrounds. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

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UPDATE: The UICollectionView is much more than a grid or matrix

Get started by [downloading the full Xcode project from GitHub.]

Let’s talk about the UICollectionView, a rich, configurable, and powerful iOS user interface component. I will write code in Swift 3.0 to create a UICollectionView to which I can add, select/highlight, deselect/unhighlight, and remove UICollectionViewCell’s. I’ll show you that I can select, deselect, add, and remove one cell at a time, or multiple cells at a time. And most importantly, I’ll demonstrate the importance of the relationship between a UICollectionView and its data source, and the importance of keeping a UICollectionView and its data source synchronized. You can download my entire Xcode 8.2.1 project. Feel free to reuse my code as long as you follow the terms of the license agreement. Today, we’re going to build a basic but completely functional instance of the UICollectionView in Swift 3.0 as illustrated by the following video:

Continue reading “UPDATE: The UICollectionView is much more than a grid or matrix”

iOS 101 or … Basic animation, Auto Layout, and view geometry – Part 5

[Download the full Xcode project from GitHub.]

Today, I’m going answer all the questions I posed in this series of posts entitled “Basic animation, Auto Layout, and view geometry – Part X” (see parts 1, 2, 3, and 4). I’ll help you understand how how I created the following iPhone animation using Swift 3.0 — and/or how to get started with your first iOS app:

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Basic animation, Auto Layout, and view geometry – Part 4

[Download the full Xcode project from GitHub.]

Today, I’m going to push you to understand how how I created the following iPhone animation using Swift 3.0:

I’ll give you everything you need to figure out what I did — but I won’t explain it for you. Explanation will come later (in the next post, I tie all posts in this series, 1, 2, 3, and 4 together). I want you to learn about my design and code, not just copy and paste it. There is a method to my seeming madness. Hang in there with me through this series of posts.

After providing you with diagrams, source code, references, definitions, inline commentary, etc., I want you to be able to answer some questions about building iOS animations, even if it requires you to do some research, before I put all the pieces together in the final chapter (post) in this series. Remember that I started this blog with the intention of helping new/aspiring iOS app developers get started in an exciting, creative, and potentially financially rewarding profession. I don’t want to just provide code for you to copy and paste into your own app projects, I want you to become the best of the best iOS designers and developers. So let me:

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Basic animation, Auto Layout, and view geometry – Part 3

[Download the full Xcode project from GitHub.]

In this series of posts, “Basic animation, Auto Layout, and view geometry – Part X,” we’re learning about basic animation in several steps. In the first post on Monday, “Basic animation, Auto Layout, and view geometry – Part 1,” we covered setting up a storyboard scene using Auto Layout. In yesterday’s post, “Basic animation, Auto Layout, and view geometry – Part 2,” we used some basic UIView geometry to play with shapes and sizes and we drew on the iPhone screen. Today, we’ll be writing the code to explore iOS animation capabilities. I started writing code yesterday in Swift 3.0, but will later be providing Objective-C versions. I’ll make all the source code available to y’all on GitHub as we move forward. Tomorrow, we’ll start tying parts 1, 2, and 3 together and explaining all the details.

NOTE: The iOS skill level required herein is “beginner” to “intermediate.” One of the purposes of this blog is to help aspiring new iOS developers get started on the right foot. For all you seasoned (or “advanced”) developers out there, I encourage you to stick with this blog as we’ll be covering very complex iOS scenarios too. Everyone can benefit from these articles, including myself, by getting your feedback.

Let’s start with some iOS “block animation,” the simplest and easiest (yet very powerful) means of animating UIView objects. The UIKit framework provides a clean infrastructure for animations. According to Apple:

Continue reading “Basic animation, Auto Layout, and view geometry – Part 3”