Using fontawesome for objective-C iOS Developer

If you like to use fontawesome in your objective C App, I have find a perfect project on github, this is the link:

https://github.com/alexdrone/ios-fontawesome

FontAwesome+iOS

Font awesome is an iconic font. Read more about it on http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/
This category brings this great iconic font on iOS.

Usage

First, make sure you have FontAwesome.ttf bundled in your project and that UIAppFonts key in the project's plist file contains a String item named FontAwesome.ttf Then add the NSString+FontAwesome category to the project.

UILabel *label = [...]
label.font = [UIFont fontWithName:kFontAwesomeFamilyName size:20];

You can now use enums for all the different iconic characters

label.text = [NSString fontAwesomeIconStringForEnum:FAGithub];

or you can reference them by using the class identifiers listed here http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/#all-icons

label.text = [NSString fontAwesomeIconStringForIconIdentifier:@"fa-github"];

That's it! For further information have a look to the small demo project!

FAImageView

FAImageView is now extended and contains a new property called defaultView that is shown when the image is set to nil. It is possible to use one the font-awesome icon as a default placeholder for an image view.

FAImageView *imageView = [[FAImageView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0.f, 0.f, 100.f, 100.f)];
imageView.image = nil;
[imageView setDefaultIconIdentifier:@"fa-github"];

License

This project uses the FontAwesome fix made by Pit Garbe that you can find at https://github.com/leberwurstsaft/FontAwesome-for-iOS Version 2.0 of the Font Awesome font, CSS, and LESS files are licensed under CC BY 3.0: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ A mention of 'Font Awesome - http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome' in human-readable source code is considered acceptable attribution (most common on the web). If human readable source code is not available to the end user, a mention in an 'About' or 'Credits' screen is considered acceptable (most common in desktop or mobile software)

UIFont Class Reference

Overview

The UIFont class provides the interface for getting and setting font information. The class provides you with access to the font’s characteristics and also provides the system with access to the font’s glyph information, which is used during layout. You use font objects by passing them to methods that accept them as a parameter.

You do not create UIFont objects using the alloc and init methods. Instead, you use class methods of UIFont, such as preferredFontForTextStyle:, to look up and retrieve the desired font object. These methods check for an existing font object with the specified characteristics and return it if it exists. Otherwise, they create a new font object based on the desired font characteristics.
Font objects are immutable and so it is safe to use them from multiple threads in your app.

Read more: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/uikit/reference/UIFont_Class/Reference/Reference.html

Designing app for iOS 7

Deference, clarity and depth are the main themes for iOS 7 development. Focus on core functionalities and content and keep the design simple.

Provide clarity:

1. Use plenty of negative space, negative space make important content more noticeable. 
2. Let color simplify the UI.
3. Ensure legibility by using the system fonts. 
4. Embrace borderless buttons.   

Content is at the heart of iOS 7: 

1. Take advantage of the whole screen, let content extend to the edges.
2. Reconsider visual indicators of physicality and realism, avoid heavy UI elements, keep it simple, focus on content and let the UI have the supporting role. 
3. Let translucent UI elements hint at the content behind them.

What is autoreleasepool?

@autoreleasepool {

 return UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, nil, NSStringFromClass([yourAppNameAppDelegate class]));

}

Basically autoreleasepool supports automatic reference counting, which provides automatic object-life time management for your iOS application.

In simple words it just makes sure that objects are around as long as they are needed in your app and not longer.

written by: infinitywebseo 

How to Check iCloud is available in your app?

After enabling icloud on your app, just copy and paste the highlighted lines of code to your appdelegate.m to check that icloud is available for your app:

- (void)initializeiCloudAccess {
    dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, 0), ^{
        if ([[NSFileManager defaultManager]
             URLForUbiquityContainerIdentifier:nil] != nil)
            NSLog(@"iCloud is available\n");
        else
            NSLog(@"iCloud is not available.\n");
    });
}

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions
{
   
    [self initializeiCloudAccess];

    return YES;
}

Multi-threading

Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) is a C API.  The basic idea is that you have queues of operations, which are specified using blocks. The blocks in the queue run in another thread except main thread.

There are two types of queues.  Serial Queues and Concurrent Queues
In serial queues blocks are executed in order. (one by one)

When do we use Multi-threading:

Accessing the network
Big calculation, hugs loines of code


Creating and releasing queues:
dispatch_queue_t dishpatch_queue_create(const char *label, NULL); // Null means serial queue

Putting blocks in the queue:
typedef void (^dispatch_block_t)(void);
void dispatch_async(dispatch_queue_t queue, dispatch_block_t block); //it puts the block in the queue then returns to main thread immediately

void dispatch_sync(dispatch_queue_t queue, dispatch_block_t block);  // puts the block in the queue and waits until the block finally gets to run to compelition and get backs to current thread

Getting the current or main queue
dispatch_queue_t dispatch_get_current_queue();
dispatch_queue_t dispatch_get_main_queue();

written by: infinitywebseo