Everyone that has built an iPhone application has at one time or another worked with UITableViews. They are pretty much at the heart of most data intensive applications from Twitter clients to just your standard news app. One thing that’s not too clear is how do you get more from your tables without jamming (usually with a sledgehammer and your trusty shoe horn) them into a header of a table section header. There isn’t much information on the net (at least that I found in my multiple searches) that really goes into how to accomplish this as well. Read more…
Recently, I’ve been given an oppotunity at my employer to participate in the next great version of our iPhone application. While it isn’t something fun and exciting, like ConvertBot or a game such as Eliminate Pro, it does allow me to get my hands dirty in Objective-C and iPhone development. With this experience has come a few things that I found difficult, at best, to spot an answer to within a single location. One of these things is something that, within a large corporation such as the one I work in, will help your support staff determine what version of your application a user currently has. Yes, there are items such as CFBundleVersion and CFBundleShortVersionString that accomplish this for you, but sometimes those may not be enough. Wouldn’t it be great if you could put the most recent commit revision number from your code repository? Good news, you can! Read more…
In my job, I’m always asked to review and make recommendations regarding the code in the company’s User Interface space. While this is generally a fun and exciting process, it sometimes just proves the difference between developers that know a language and those that can get by during a coding effort. This is where I believe large corporations usually fall short when defining roles for people to employ. Read more…
We all have items we focus on from day to day when building sites. It is always a challenge to get an idea of what really matters to a client and even what they know about their consumers. Most developers/designers spend hours trying to convince clients that they need to focus on ensuring everyone that comes to their site can access everything in it, but most clients want flashy, dynamic and even some times, over-thought items on their site just because it looks cool or someone has said the magic phrase, “It’s Web 2.0!”. For most, it’s working with people that don’t realize they could be missing out on multiple audiences when they ask for something. For others, it’s that they want what they like and everyone else must like it too. And even for more, it’s that they just don’t know any better.
Read more…
Everyone who has had to build a web application has come across issues with balancing accessibility needs of the product and keeping the site looking new and exciting. Even though my company is generally more on the conservative side, there are still those working within that realize that the only way to capture an audience is to “wow” them with a fresh look at the information users come to learn about and, hopefully, purchase. But what does this have to do with modals and accessibility? Read more…
Well, after years of reading others’ blogs, I’ve finally decided to start my own. Being a developer at a major insurance company, there’s definitely a lot for me to talk about, yet sometimes time is not on my side. While posts may be sporadic for a while, I’m going to try an post at least once a week.