Posts tagged Interface Buider
IdeaPitch – built on Microsoft Surface
1I am very close to finish another project in Fraunhofer FIT: IdeaPitch on the Microsoft Surface.
This concept is very simple, you are able to “store” ideas in a repository, created using PHP and MySQL, and later on manipulate it on Microsoft Surface, along with the rest of the contributors. Other clients, iPhone and Air, were developed and are able to connect to the repository and register the ideas there. They are acting like individual clients, the iPhone can’t be used comfortable by more than one person. Not to mention that this is kind of personal device by its nature.
The Surface application allows users to connect to a PHP webservice which provides the interface to the small repository for “ideas”, the transfer is using XML to provide a easy way to consume data. Below you can see some photos which depict how these ideas are shown. The application uses quite a lot from the surface features – multitouch, special contextual menus – different for “idea” representation and for the main surface, a custom built management interface, allowing easy saving and restore of the session from the repository.
It features “agents” which can:
- send the message back to the sender,
- “duplicate” the message
- send it to a timer
- to a random logged in user by using the “decide”
- … and worth mention also to a Nabaztag, the funny white wireless rabbit!
I have the feeling that this app will be demoed soon in some fairs or conferences regarding communication and collaboration where Fraunhofer FIT will be represented!
iMeet application presentation
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Finally, the biggest moment: application is ready!! I am very proud of this application, as it represents my achievements in fast learning and adapting to:
- new way of programming, as XCode and Interface Builder truly represent the ModelViewController paradigm
- new language- Objective-C, which as any language has its pluses and minuses
- new device: mobile devices on which I didn’t work since my experience on Sales Force Automation in TotalSoft company, back in 2005, on Windows CE.
I’ve structured the application visually in few areas:
1. Login screen – the ‘”gate” to the application. Since the access to the
XML-RPC is done in a secure way, the application implemented also a credential input and recording mechanism. The mechanism is dual: user can enter the login into the first screen or in the iPhone Settings application. Depends only on him where and how he’ll manage his credentials.
The main point of this screen is to create a intuitive interface for users to insert their credentials, instead of having to leave the application and go to the iPhone settings.
Objective-C: Putting markers on Map control
1
This article comes as a completion to my previous ones, XCode : using MapKit with no geocoding available out of the box and XCode: Modal windows – Google maps and shows how to add pins on your already created Map View.
First of all, adding the points to the map is not as intuitive as it might seem, so let’s start by creating a new class called POI – point of interest. Its header must be filled with this code:
#import <foundation foundation.h> #import <mapkit mapkit.h> #import <corelocation corelocation.h> @interface POI : NSObject{
CLLocationCoordinate2D coordinate;
NSString *subtitle;
NSString *title;
}
@property (nonatomic, readonly) CLLocationCoordinate2D coordinate;
@property (nonatomic,retain) NSString *subtitle;
@property (nonatomic,retain) NSString *title;
- (id) initWithCoords:(CLLocationCoordinate2D) coords;
@end
XCode: Modal windows – Google maps
1
From time to time, you’ll need to show in your iPhone application a view over the entire application without navigating and destroying your workflow of the application. I’ll present the mechanism of modal windows as it is implemented in Cocoa Touch.
Lets take a real case: you have a view in which you want to input an address. Near the address you have a button which will show the user the Map centered on the specific address that he inputted. How this can be implemented?
The answer is quite simple: you need to declare the view from which you launch the modal view as <UINavigationBarDelegate> in the header file (.h for newbies), like this:
@interface CtrlAddEvtView1 : UIViewController <UINavigationBarDelegate>
This way, the view will know “magically” how to interact with children views.
XCode : using MapKit with no geocoding available out of the box
1
One of the tasks in the CSCW lab was to create a map on which the users to see the location of a specific address.
So I started working on it, knowing that the newest framework brings a lot of goodies, through which there is also a map framework. But surprise! Apple provides only reverse geocoding, not forward geocoding. This means that you can only transform a pair of Latitude / Longitude to the Map and it will show it to the user. But what to do when user enters an address?
My point is that nobody caries with him a GPS to search for the address, get the coordinates and enter them into my map!
I was curious about it and after a little search I found that there was a big argue about the geocoding and Apple didn’t want to pay the price that Google and Tom-Tom asked for this feature.
Objective-C: Base64 to NSString and NSString to Base64
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While working on the CSCW Lab project, I encountered a situation in which the XML-RPC call returned an image, of course encoded as Base64. And guess what – in its known style, Apple doesn’t provide Base64 encoding and decoding – quite lame, given the fact that this encoding is used everywhere in data transfer over the internet – e-mail, browsers, web services – all of them use at some point this encoding to overcome the different local encodings on each one’s machine.
Once identified this problem, I had to solve it somehow – but guess what? – over the free sources there aren’t too many functions that provide this simple and basic encoding.
Finally, after few hours of searching, I finally found that Eric Czarny had a very successful implementation of this in its Cocoa XML-RPC Framework . After taking a quick look at its code, I end up using and importing into my project the
- NSStringAdditions.h. NSStringAdditions.m – providing the new category
+ (NSString *)base64StringFromData: (NSData *)data length: (int)length;
- NSDataAdditions.h and NSDataAdditions providing the new category:
+ (NSData *)base64DataFromString: (NSString *)string;
Being categories, they are automatically added to NSString and NSData automatically at runtime, thus their usage is straight forward :
UIImageView *uiIV;
// currentElementValue holds the string representation of the image, encoded in Base64
NSData *nsD = [NSData base64DataFromString: [dataLayer currentElementValue]];
if ([nsD ){
uiIV = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:[UIImage imageWithData: nsD]];
}
Processing NSDate into an ISO8601 string
2
During the CSCW Lab, where I had the experience of working on iPhone, I had to connect to a XML RPC server. Some of the parameters of the request had to be formatted as ISO8601 standard. After some reading, I end up using the following code, managing both the conversion of a NSDate to NSString and a NSString to a NSDATE using the above format:
NSString –> NSDate
-(NSString *) strFromISO8601:(NSDate *) date {
static NSDateFormatter* sISO8601 = nil;
if (!sISO8601) {
sISO8601 = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
NSTimeZone *timeZone = [NSTimeZone localTimeZone];
int offset = [timeZone secondsFromGMT];
NSMutableString *strFormat = [NSMutableString stringWithString:@"yyyyMMdd'T'HH:mm:ss"];
offset /= 60; //bring down to minutes
if (offset == 0)
[strFormat appendString:ISO_TIMEZONE_UTC_FORMAT];
else
[strFormat appendFormat:ISO_TIMEZONE_OFFSET_FORMAT, offset / 60, offset % 60];
[sISO8601 setTimeStyle:NSDateFormatterFullStyle];
[sISO8601 setDateFormat:strFormat];
}
return[sISO8601 stringFromDate:date];
}
Objective-C: UIAlert or asking for confirmation
0
While start XCoding, I faced a new challenge : how to create modal, single use confirmation dialogs? So after some digging in the internet, I found out that this can be actually done pretty simple and elegant. This will be very useful if you want to display some deletion confirmation or ask for user permission to use the camera or GPS sensor. All you have to do is just create a UIAlert and the IBAction hooked up to your “Nuclear launch” button, and then have its delegate decide whether to destroy the world or not.
In the header file you have to add this declaration of the action performed when the fatal button is clicked:
- (IBAction) btnLaunchNuclearStrikeClicked:(id)sender - (IBAction) deleteButtonClicked:(id)sender; (more...)
UIImageView setImage problem
3
While working for this semester’s CSCW lab project, I encountered a strange situation: no matter what I did, the UIImageView didn’t load the image. After some digging on the Internet about this, I found out that first thing to look for is whether you’re sending the setImage message to the UIImageView instance you expect.
Being newbie in XCode and Apple’s technologies in general, I forgot to use NSLog. So my advice is to check and check often with NSLog for a nil pointer in the same place you’re trying to set the image. Obj-C loves to make freshman crazy by sending messages to nil pointers without any warning or other problem. So check if the pointer is nil, double check the IBOutlet connection to the UIImageView in IB.
Working in Fraunhofer Institute of Technology
2Starting today, I work as a Student Helper in Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology. The branch from Sankt Augustin, which I joined, is focused on the research of human-centered computing in a process context. I will activate in the Cooperation and Community Support department, which deals with the research and development of community portals, (mobile) communities and cooperation, Internet-based groupware, cooperative knowledge management, application service providing for cooperative work and virtual teams, rating and recommender systems and cooperative learning environments.
The head of the department is Prof. Wolfgang Prinz, PhD and I will work closely with Mr. Nils Jeners, researcher in FIT. I had the pleasure of attending Mr. Prinz course, CSCW and Groupware, while being student in the Media Informatics Master, held by RWTH Aachen University. CSCW stands for Computer Supported Collaborative Work.
My first task is to study the Twitter community, applications based on it and the actual phenomena. My work should help in better understanding the aspects of human behavior, social interaction between humans and in particular the tools and services used for microblogging. This will allow also to discover ways to extract patterns in the context of this technology, who is changing the ways that people interact and socialize over the Internet.
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