I know HTML. Its on my CV. Expert level. I also know CSS and a whole bunch of JavaScript. I can even do TDD with JavaScript.
And on the iPhone there is this nifty object called UIWebView. Otherwise known as WebKit. Otherwise known as an embedded browser in your iPhone app.
And if you want a sexily awesome looking UI view, like the Today view of the Surf Report app (see right or free on AppStore) that was released on the AppStore recently, then the WebKit is just the best thing since the electric bread slicer for speed of development.
Holy grail of iPhone development?
Well, that’s what we thought. When I chatted with Dan Grigsby last week I mentioned there were good and bad things about the WebKit within an iPhone app.
This article is about good and bad things. The pros and cons. How we managed the integration of the two code-bases. And the answer to the big question: Would we do it again?
Its probably wonderfully useful stuff to know.
(more…)
Radio is where ugly people go. Podcasts is where ugly, niche people go. It doesn’t get much uglier and nicher than talking about iPhone dev; and the tale of one desperate man X on a desperate journey Y with his desperate sidekick Z, where:
- X = Dr Nic
- Y = iPhone development
- Z = Ruby
From the Mobile Orchard news desk:
Dr. Nic talks about his migration manager for updating SQLite iPhone databases, trying to get Ruby onto an iPhone, using Ruby to unit-test Objective-C iPhone code, his company Mocra, and the Mobile Orchard Podcast’s lavish recording studios.
Dan Grigsby is the interviewer and post-production guy for the interview, and so it is entirely his handy work that it seems like I’m the only one talking for 15 minutes. The original interview took 4 hours and it was mostly him talking. He’s quite a chatterbox. I barely got a word in edgewise. [1]
Dan also created this list of “things we talked about”:
- 0:00: Migrations for SQLite
- 5:18: Getting Ruby onto an iPhone
- 5:59: Nu – Lisp-based language that sits atop Obj-C and would work on the iPhone
- 7:37: Unit testing Obj-C from Ruby
- 8:12: Webkit UIs
- 12:31: Mocra / “Used my blog for evil”
Go to Mobile Orchard (or Mobile Awkward it is accidently called at the end of the interview) to cop a listen.
[1] This paragraph starts well and ends with blatant falsehoods.