I was looking into creating iOS-apps (especially for the iPad) with the Adobe-Flex framework. It looks very promising to code apps this way.
Is it possible to create own controls/widgets? In the far future I might want to create my own kind of gantt-calender or whatever. Is something like this possible and are there any good tutorials/book out there?
Thanks in advance!
UPDATE: I want to create iOS Components that I can use in Flex. Controls, that are not aviable by default in Flex. Is that possible? By derivating or something?
UPDATE 2: In the meanwhile I found FlexLib to be useful. How hard is it to create stuff like this on your own? Especially for mobile devices. Are there any good tutorials, books, etc. out there?
Yes, you can create your own Controls in Flex. They are commonly called Components. I suggest you start by reading the Flex Docs on how to do so. There are also plenty of other resources out there. One is a screencast series that I created for The Flex Show. Here is episode 1.
You had asked:
How hard is it to create stuff like this on your own?
It depends on what the component wants to do. The commercial components we've built at www.flextras.com have taken from three to twelve months to build. Our Calendar is built from scratch, but most of the other components extend existing Flex Framework components.
The Flextras stuff are architected for reuse. A "single use" component for a specific app can be built in 1 hour [and up].
Once again, the purpose of a component will affect how long it takes to build.
#chiffre
Ok, maybe I am guessing wrong but "iOS controls" makes me think not to "flex controls".
Anyway with Flex 4.5.1 you can add any controls you want, the only thing that you must count (and this counts a lot) is performance.
Read especially about item renderers since scrolling list is not so fast on iOS and how you can make use of cacheAsBitmap.
Also keep in mind to always use light controls when needed if not extend base controls like UIComponent or Sprite and not Button if you just need a rectangle.
Here are some links
http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2011/06/adobe-air-2-7-now-available-ios-apps-4x-faster.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/mobile-development-flex-flashbuilder.
Related
I've created a core mechanic of my game and want to create a level editor for it. my game is not a tile-based one, so my needs are quite specific. Game is written using Swift and Cocos2d-swift, but i dont think i can figure something out with Sprite Builder.
What you can advice me? Can I for example create a level editor with c# and then use it from swift code?
And what data structure is the best?
I mean is it possible to serialize classes on desktop Swift application and then just load them on ios from file or I'll need to use json/xml?
It might be an old question but I ended up with using a .Net powered solution. I choosed as It has all controls that you need for creating a rich user interface and also, it has a lot of built-in and third party solutions for serializing levels in any way you want. And the c# syntax is very similar to the Swift one.
The only problem is that you might run windows to work with it.
My game in development also needed a non-tile level editor. A few months ago I took some time to make my choice.
Since my project still uses cocos2d 2.x, I don't use the whole new 3.x and SB system. After some investigation I found out that it would be too time consuming to adjust my whole project to the new system and adjusting SB to my needs, mainly because my game engine has been in development for quite some time and is close to finished. Further more, I couldn't find the right information to actually make it work for my game (it needed some odd level architecture I guess).
Finally, I didn't find any other good alternative so I decided to create my own level editor. In this way I had full control and I knew exactly how everything worked which was a huge advantage for me.
Right now my level editor has been finished for some time and works like a charm. I still think in my situation I made the right choice. Also because I learned a lot this way, building everything from the ground up. Having said that, for my next game I will probably go with the main stream and use SB from the start. Also for you I advice you to still check out SB and take some time for it before making an alternative choice...
I'll explain how I did mine. Disclaimer: it has some oddity's which only worked in my situation, but hopefully it helps a bit with choosing your own way to go, that's the goal I'm aiming at...
I used:
max/msp
Although it's developed to make music and audio based software, I used max/msp because it's very easy and fast for creating visual and interface based software as well.
More importend: I happened to be very experienced in it, which shortened the development time tremendously.
javascript
Inside the max/msp patch is a javascript file running. This file is like a bridge between the interface and the visual representation of the level being edited, and the database in which the level
is saved in. 70% of the editor development went into this file I think.
sqlite
All the data is written in a sqlite database. Again, this has been mainly the choice because it saved a great amount of development time in my case. I could have used xml files for instance, but my game was already using a sqlite database and because of this I felt comfortable using it, I had no experience in xml. Also all the code was already in place for a big part, which speeded up the whole proces a lot.
I'm very happy with the end result. It does everything I need, it's easy too use and since I made everything myself from the ground up I know exactly how every works.
Good luck with you choices.
We are creating an iOS app that does not look like any other app you would find in the app store.
My question is, am I allowed to create custom components such as header bars, tab bars, tables etc. for my app and not get rejected by Apple when publishing the app to the app store?
Months of thought and planning has gone into the UI and flow of the app, so the user experience would be superb, we're just concerned about how apple feels about custom apps/components like these?
Regards
There's nothing inherently wrong with creating an app that's got a completely different look and feel to everything else.
But what I would advise is that you try to use the built-in components as much as possible. In recent versions of iOS Apple have introduced a number of APIs to let you customise their look and feel significantly, and some of the most innovative UIs out there are simple table and collection views that have been hacked to pieces.
This is because Apple's built in components have logged many hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of hours of real-world testing and use, and are thus vastly more stable and field-tested than a totally custom component. Plus, they often have various built in features (such as a scroll view's bounce) that are hard to replicate on your own.
So definitely customise your interface as much as you like, but while you're doing it think about whether you can harness the built-in UIKit classes rather than totally re-inventing the wheel.
More and more custom controls appear for iOS every day. If it is so good as you say, Apple will be happy to accept it. Don't worry.
Also take a look at these cocoacontrols
As said before, Apple will not have a problem with that .. as long as you don't use any private APIs. If you are developing these components on your own, you will have to make sure that these will work in future releases (which is not necessarily a bad point) . This may be a problem with third party components, as they may not be continued (or supported in future releases).
Hello I am building forms over and over in iPhone and iPad apps:
Custom UITableViewCells for labels with input
Localization for labels, placeholder text and section headers
Validation that marks the cells red or something and does not allow "Submit" if form is incomplete
Clicking in the cell activates the editable text box
Next / previous buttons
Reliable across devices, orientations, iOS versions
I can't imagine I'm the only one doing this. Is there a mature framework or something that can drop in and use? Could you please comment on how you use this library with designs other than vanilla UITableViews with your own colors etc.?
Take a look at IBAForms - an open source project from from Itty Bitty Apps. I haven't used it yet myself, however I believe it does most of what you want, except for validation. Here is the github page: IBA Forms
It hasn't been maintained in a while, but if you're looking for a forms library - it's mature and works. At the very least, it could be the starting point for something you take further.
Update: There is also Chris Miles' EZForm library, which is very nice.
Update #2: Have also started checking out QuickDialog, which seems to be very popular.
Update #3: Nick Lockwood has created one called FXForms
Update #4: Martin Barreto has created one called XLForm
I don't know if this counts as an answer, but i use Sensible Cocoa - Sensible TableView (STV) for this purpose a lot. It's not a "forms" framework (on top of UITableView) as such, but it can be used for this purpose in a very flexible way. It still requires some coding to build a full-fledged form but the UITableView/UITableViewController boilerplate code is reduced to a minimum. Unfortunately the developers bumped the price tag quite high with version 3.0, so i'm actually looking for a STV replacement right now. (I'd stick with STV if it wasn't for the price!)
I don't know of anything that combines all those features, but I recently open-sourced my validation library PMValidation on github, which I used developing the iPhone app Imprints. PMValidation comes with many basic types suitable for validating forms, and in fact that's what I originally built it for.
Using the PMValidationManager class you can easily listen to UITextViews or UITextFields, and update whatever graphical widgets you want via notifications. It's very modular and easily extendable, should you have more unique needs. It's under the MIT license.
There seems to be a lot of conflicting information out there. It might be that support has increased recently, or changes to adobe.com/air have made some information difficult to find - but I can't track down a definitive list of things to avoid.
I know that actionscript won't run in loaded SWFs, I know that some people say that filters and blendmodes and halo components won't work. I've also read many posts saying they will (at least that blendmodes will, and that halo will run, but slowly so still use spark)
I have a large amount of AS3 code to plan for upgrading to work on iOS, but at the moment I have no idea what things will break (or what things will break when those things have been fixed!)
Is there a list of unsupported APIs, or iOS dos and don'ts?
Thanks
:S
First, yes. Externally loaded SWF's will not run. You can however embed SWF's/SWC's into your project and include them inside of your package.
As far as Flex components, stay away from Halo. You should use Flex 4.6 and stick to components with mobile skins. I recommend downloading Tour de Flex http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/tourdeflex.html to get an idea of whats available.
As far as blend modes go, I'm not really sure. I haven't used them in mobile yet. However filters are supported but they are expensive. For drop shadows on rectangles there is something called RectangularDropShadow. This is actually a component and therefor less expensive. However it can only be used on rectangular groups.
You should have access all of the AIR API's. You will however be restricted when using some of File related classes since I don't believe you can leave your Appliaction Storage Directory.
One big performance tip I can give is to use AS3 over MXML whenever possible, ESPECIALLY when creating item renderers. Use BitmapImage over Image whenever possible, again especially in item renderers. Use cacheAsBitmap whenever you have images that don't change often. And stay away from any Flex component that doesn't have a mobile skin.
You may also want to read up on View and destruction policies.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex-mobile-development-tips-tricks-pt1.html
This link also has some more performance tips
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex-mobile-performance-checklist.html
While reading delphifeeds yesterday I discovered delQuery, which allows one to get some nice animation on his form very simply.
I would like to know if there are any other libraries of that kind out there and what experience you had with them ?
(I'm trying to find a way to make my application more alive in terms of GUI; buttons that grow when you hover them, that kind of animations but with a nice programmatic interface)
Do you mean something like Billenium Effects?
(source: billeniumsoft.com)
There is CrossGL at http://www.crossgl.com/