Tag: UX

It's almost halloween here, but our regular list of great reads is not spooky at all!

• Quentin Zervaas goes through Focus Filters API to allow all to respond to user's current needs – Showing Relevant Data Using Focus Filters;
  
  
• Introduction to bash scripting for iOS developers by Natascha Fadeeva will make you better shell users;
  
  
• Natalia Panferova navigates through logging changes in Xcode 15 – Filtering logs in Xcode 15;
  
  
• Improving app settings management is covered in User Defaults reading and writing in Swift by Antoine van der Lee;
  
  
• Generating Random Numbers Elegantly in Swift by Jordan Morgan explores random generators in Swift;
  
  
• Pasquale Vittorosi goes through VoiceOver and other accessibility traits in Preparing your App for VoiceOver: use Accessibility Label;
  
  
• Domenico De Luca continues accessibility topic with Ensure Visual Accessibility: supporting the Large Content Viewer;
  
  
• Swift metatypes are not that hard to understand – Leonardo Maia Pugliese covers those in Swift Metatypes: What They Are and Why You Should Care;
  
  
• Holidays are coming soon, learn how to handle special pricing – How to run a holiday sale in App Store Connect for iOS subscription apps by Charlie Chapman;
  
  
• David Smith explains his design decisions in Design Evolution: Offline Map Downloader, and also great new series on visionOS – Introducing visionOS Fridays;
  
  
• Using the ARKit coaching view in a SwiftUI AR application by Matteo Altobello helps navigating users through AR apps.

Wrapping up for this weekend and see you next time in November!

We're gearing towards the end of the year. Here is 41st installment of Good Reads in 2023. Let's see what we've got for this week.

• Monitoring App Usage using the Screen Time Framework by Quentin Zervaas explains use of Apple's lightweight MDM framework;
  
  
• Natascha Fadeeva explains purchase restoration with StoreKit 2 – How to restore in-app purchases with StoreKit 2 for iOS;
  
  
• Using new preview mechanism in UIKit is covered in Replacing IBDesignable with Xcode Previews by Keith Harrison;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov covers haptic feedback APIs in SwiftUI – Sensory feedback in SwiftUI;
  
  
• @preconcurrency: Incremental migration to concurrency checking by Antoine van der Lee is a great guide for gradual adoption of modern Swift concurrency;
  
  
• Tiago Gomes Pereira goes through location tracking with Swift – Updating the User’s Location with Core Location and Swift Concurrency in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Designing for spatial computing: from iOS and iPadOS to visionOS by Emanuele Agosta is a deep dive on spatial computing design;
  
  
• ChatGPT is still a hot topic, here is a take on use of AI in development by Mina H. Gerges – The Do’s and Don’ts of Using AI in Software Development;
  
  
• Peter Meinertzhagen goes through ways of monetizing subscription apps – 9 PR ideas to promote your subscription app;
  
  
• Quinn “The Eskimo!” shares tips on working with Developer ID – The Care and Feeding of Developer ID.

And now, we could get some rest over the weekend. Get back next time – we'll have something interesting. As always :)

Fall is here, another nice weekend is here too. Let's go through great articles.

• Point-free pointers advertise their new tool to test Swift Macros – A new tool for testing macros in Swift;
  
  
• Apple added new lifecycle method to UIView, Keith Harrison covers it in UIKit View Lifecycle - viewIsAppearing;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov continues his series on charts – Mastering charts in SwiftUI. Pie and Donut charts.;
  
  
• The Future of Accessing User Location in SwiftUI by Leonardo Maia Pugliese is covering location tracking aspects in modern apps;
  
  
• Antoine van der Lee goes through parameter packs in Swift – Value and Type parameter packs in Swift explained with examples;
  
  
• Bruno Rocha goes deep into implementation details of Swift structured concurrency – How async/await works internally in Swift;
  
  
• Craig Hockenberry explores design changes in watchOS – The Timer in watchOS 10.

And that is it. Come back next week for more great articles!

It's the end of April, we are getting closer and closer to WWDC, June will definitely be filled with a lot of process. So, let's catch up with all prior-to-conference good reads.

• Natascha Fadeeva shares detailed guide on App Clips, the great way to attract new users – Developer guide on App Clips for iOS;
  
  
• Speedrun Design: Heart Rate Zone View in SwiftUI by David Smith continues series on how iterate through design ideas;
  
  
• Keith Harrison provides good use cases for Swift Reflection API – Using Swift Reflection;
  
  
• PhotosPicker in SwiftUI by Majid Jabrayilov goes through privacy-preserving photo picking API in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Lee Kah Seng explains on how to properly mix UIKit with SwiftUI – How to Use UIHostingConfiguration to Integrate SwiftUI Views into UIKit Apps;
  
  
• Antoine van der Lee provides networking implementation hints in Optimizing your app for Network Reachability;
  
  
• Using TextKit configuration to optimize text display is explained in How to prevent orphan words in text views on iOS and macOS by Jesse Squires;
  
  
• Leonardo Maia Pugliese guides through date display in Simplify Time Comparisons in Swift with RelativeDateTimeFormatter;
  
  
• SwiftLint in Depth by Ehab Amer explains important pipelines to keep codebase clean;
  
  
• How to use SFSafariViewController in SwiftUI by Sarun W. explains couple of issues on integrating SFSafariViewController into SwiftUI projects.

And that is it for today. Have a great weekend, go through interesting articles and come back next week!

Lucky episode of good reads today! And we've got a lot to cover on last day of March.

• Marcel Voss explains how to deal with new Swift features conditionally – Enabling Upcoming Swift Language Features;
  
  
• And good tip on source code checks for Swift features – SDK conditional code with canImport(module, _version: "1.2.3.4") by Marco Eidinger;
  
  
• How the relative size modifier interacts with stack views by Ole Begemann continues topic of complex layouts in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Keith Harrison explains sort options on SwiftUI tables – Custom Sort Comparators;
  
  
• How to change JSON keys by using Swift's CodingKey protocol by Natascha Fadeeva is covering Codable customizations;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov goes into details on new approaches of sharing content in SwiftUI – Sharing content in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Morphology in Swift by Jordan Morgan goes deep into Swift number localization techniques;
  
  
• Lee Kah Seng continues his series on Widgets – How to Hide Sensitive Widget Data When Device Is Locked?;
  
  
• Antoine van der Lee explains location debugging practices in simulator – Location Simulation in Xcode’s Simulator;
  
  
• How to fix "You are not authorized to make purchases of this InApp in Sandbox at this time" error by Sarun W. helps to fix development issues with in-app purchases;
  
  
• Leonardo Maia Pugliese provides extensive guide on persistence solutions for iOS apps – SQLite vs Core Data in iOS Development: Which One Should You Choose?

We're finishing with video by David Smith on design.

With this – have a great weekend and see you in April!

This weekend brings another digest of interesting articles for Apple developers.

• Starting with great Swift cheatsheet – Swift Cookbook by team Kodeco;
  
  
• Chris Eidhof shares two articles: on SwiftUI environment – SwiftUI Environment Tips and use of colors and styles in SwiftUI – Semantic Colors and Styles;
  
  
• Leonardo Maia Pugliese continues topic of SwiftUI components styling – A Beginner’s Guide to Styling Components in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Design notes from David Smith – DND 22: Calculating Offline Map Tiles and DND 23: Scaling UI Sizes with Dynamic Type;
  
  
• Applying Gestalt Principles in UI/UX App Design by Emanuele Agosta is a great read on UI/UX which will help all of us to improve our own "sense of beauty";
  
  
• Antoine van der Lee dives deep into Swift concurrency – Detached Tasks in Swift explained with code examples;
  
  
• Jailbreak and its detection is covered in iOS Jailbreak Detection in 2023 by Marco Eidinger;
  
  
• Natascha Fadeeva covers API version checks with How to use the @available attribute in Swift;
  
  
• Mastering charts in SwiftUI. Interactions. by Majid Jabrayilov guides developers on how to make charts interactive;
  
  
• iPad now has hover gestures, Natalia Panferova explains how to use those in Tracking hover location in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Keith Harrison covers iPad app toolbar customizations – iPad Customizable Toolbars.

And this is it for today. Have a great weekend and come back for the more interesting articles next week!

Tough week for IT engineers, but let's try to spend weekend improving our technical skills. There are many articles to go through today, so choose wisely.

• David Smith continues his design-related series: DND 16: Building Custom Controls and DND 17: Kind, Friendly Designs;
  
  
• You can make files of your app visible in system Files app – Make your app's files user-visible on the iPhone by Marco Eidinger covers exactly this topic;
  
  
• Antoine van der Lee explains working with task groups in Swift – Task Groups in Swift explained with code examples;
  
  
• The Difference between Entity and Value Object, and How They Relate to Swift's Identifiable and Equatable Protocols by Christian Tietze explains value and reference types and their differences;
  
  
• Point-Free Pointers share their view on SwiftUI development – Modern SwiftUI;
  
  
• Couple of articles dedicated to animations start with Understanding basic animations in SwiftUI by Natascha Fadeeva;
  
  
• Then How to create Sound Wave Animation with TimelineView and Canvas in SwiftUI by Leonardo Maia Pugliese;
  
  
• Good tip on UIKit interoperability by Sarun W. – How to use SwiftUI as UIViewController in Storyboard;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov continues his series on Charts in SwiftUI – Mastering charts in SwiftUI. Mark styling.;
  
  
• SwiftUI Toolbar Title Menus by Keith Harrison explains how to make navigation title interactive in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Lee Kah Seng guides on how to refresh widgets – How to Update or Refresh a Widget?;
  
  
• And the last piece for today – great reverse engineering article by Alin Panaitiu – Reverse engineering the MacBook clamshell mode.

That is it for today. Have a great weekend and come back next Friday for another pack of great reads!

Weekend is already here. And it will be a long weekend in US, so buckle up and get ready for a long list of truly good reads.

• David Smith keeps his Design Notes Diary cycle – DND 13: Checking the Weather, DND 14: Building an Accessible Chart, DND 15: Ruthlessly Limiting Scope, and comes with another article which might be interesting for indie developers – The Tyranny of the Churn Equation;
  
  
• Great take on AsyncStream by Donny Wals – Understanding Swift Concurrency’s AsyncStream;
  
  
• We all use UserDefaults, Natascha Fadeeva shares good tips on improving its experience – How to store a Swift struct in UserDefaults;
  
  
• Point-Free Pointers share their new dependency management library – A new library to control dependencies and avoid letting them control you (and a review of it by Alejandro Martinez – On the new Point-Free swift-dependencies library);
  
  
• Renaming Toolbar Navigation Title by Keith Harrison helps implementing new UI element – renaming current document from navigation bar;
  
  
• Jordan Morgan shares his thoughts on role of small things in overall user experience – Just a Little Nicer;
  
  
• Mastering charts in SwiftUI. Basics. by Majid Jabrayilov explores Charts library in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Leonardo Maia Pugliese shares great tips of interoperability between UIKit and SwiftUI – 5 Techniques to Effortlessly Send Data from UIKit to SwiftUI;
  
  
• Text modifiers in SwiftUI by Natalia Panferova guides through usage of modifiers for Text SwiftUI element;
  
  
• Emanuele Agosta describes good approach on prototyping process – Creating App Prototypes from Low to High-Fidelity;
  
  
• Enhance your Map experience with annotations by Elina Semenko covers MapKit usage including important topic on clustering.

And finishing up with one video on Swift memory ownership model:

And that is a wrap. Have a great weekend, have some rest, read some good news and come back next Friday for another pack of good articles!

It's Christmas weekend, and to give you time to celebrate, we've made slightly smaller list of articles. But those are really good.

• Peter Tretyakov is back with Code Signing Hell with XCFramework (by the way, he hinted that ChatGPT actually helped him to improve readability of the article);
  
  
• David Smith continues his design notes diary – DND 11: Better Dynamic Type Designs and DND 12: Sparkle Magic;
  
  
• How to Create an iOS Lock Screen Widget? by Lee Kah Seng explores use of WidgetKit for Lock Screen widgets;
  
  
• Moritz Philip Recke provides a guide on DocC usage on GitHub Pages – Configuring the Hosting Base Path in Xcode to Publish DocC Documentation on GitHub Pages;
  
  
• How to perform a lightweight migration in Core Data by Natascha Fadeeva guides through simple but important process working with Core Data;
  
  
• Leonardo Maia Pugliese explains new concurrency usage in SwiftUI – Efficiently Managing Multiple Async Tasks in SwiftUI.

And that is it for today. Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

It is last weekend before Christmas, so we have a bit more time to read something interesting.

• Starting with good article on Apple Pencil features in Apple Developer blog – Spotlight on: Apple Pencil hover;
  
  
• Good take by Natascha Fadeeva on code signing in iOS – Developer guide on iOS code signing & provisioning (yes, we still need to understand that properly);
  
  
• Couple more design notes by David Smith – Design Notes Diary #7, Design Notes Diary #8 and Design Notes Diary #9;
  
  
• Jesse Squires writes on issues with iOS Simulator – Workaround: simctrl status_bar broken for iOS 16 simulators;
  
  
• Quick reminder on how to make enum's easier to read by Marco Eidinger – Swift Enum With Labeled Associated Values;
  
  
• And another guide on stride function – Swift Stride Quick Guide by Keith Harrison;
  
  
• Antoine van der Lee explains OptionSet – OptionSet in Swift explained with code examples;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov keeps his series on SwiftUI layouts – Building custom layout in SwiftUI. LayoutValueKey.;
  
  
• Creating a HomeKit-enabled App with SwiftUI by Moritz Philip Recke guides us through smart home app development process;
  
  
• Ole Begemann creates great example app to demonstrate SwiftUI view lifecycle – Understanding SwiftUI view lifecycles;
  
  
• Dynamically Change App Icons for a Unique User Experience with SwiftUI by Leonardo Maia Pugliese explains the process of changing app icon in iOS;
  
  
• Couple of Swift articles by Sarun W. – What is the difference between #available and @available and How to make Swift Enum conforms to Identifiable protocol.

And returning with video section! Great talk on JavaScriptCore usage – Make your app securely extensive with JavaScriptCore.

And that is for today! Have a great weekend!