What’s awakeFromNib for?

Sometimes traversing through the life-cycle callbacks of view loading on the iPhone still gives me a headache.  Especially when using Interface Builder (IB) as part of the UI development, finding the right method to override in order to get your custom drawing/init/etc. done can be more difficult than it may seem.  Recently, I was lost [...]

Don’t Get Lost! Tag your Comments!

Project Management, like version control, is something every developer should always be doing at some level in their work…period.  Regardless of the size and scope of a project, basic task management keeps things moving in the right direction.  However, I’m not saying that this should require some elaborate process either.  Oftentimes, a complex process can [...]

iPhone Tip: Info Button Woes

Today’s tip is a simple solution to a common problem.  The fix for this problem is all over the internet, but none of the places I visited seemed to give the whole story, they only revealed a piece of the puzzle (sorry for the cliché).  All of us who use the iPhone with any frequency [...]

Android Dialog, or is it?

We’re all familiar with the concept of providing a temporary modal view to the user in an application for the purposes of notification or basic data entry. In the Android framework (as in many computer systems) a class is provided to the developer to create and maintain these views called a Dialog. This class is [...]

Editorial: Why Android Deserves Your Attention

I’ve read an increasing number of articles on the web recently from people who fervently believe that the Android platform is dead before it ever really got started. The common mantra going along with this is that Android is late to the party, and they didn’t bring anything new with them. First of all, I’m [...]

Android Layouts Supporting Orientation

It’s been my experience that most developers don’t want to deal with screen rotation in their applications. They will either specifically code the app not to respond to rotation events (which can look weird when you have to slide the screen and use the keyboard), or they will forget that there are instances where the [...]

Adding Core Data Existing iPhone Projects

Core Data is a very powerful framework that Apple provides to developers for persisting data in their applications.  The primary advantage that is provided by Core Data is the ability to leverage efficient data storage technologies like SQLite, without forcing the developer to think in terms of query language; Core Data allows a developer to [...]