Same problem as us?

nice article on how UK's emphasis on financial wizardry might hurt them in the road to recover.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/08/james-dyson-engineering-britain-railways

Are we on the same track?

Here is what makes me goes on...

As my last post suggests the earnings are actually going down very rapidly. Therefore had been busy coming up with other apps, when I've decided to take a breather and check out reviews for my current application here is what I saw and it really gives me the motivation to try and come out with other 'innovative' (shameless me) way of doing mobile software.

I am really really happy that my new way of creating flowchart with focus of fast and simple works for the reviewers (UK appstore). It feels great when your creation is being appreciated by the users. Hope I've achieve the aim of showing my friends that we are better than what we/others think. (I still remember my friend's remark on doing a flowchart is too difficult)

Oh how can I forget, if you are interested you can purchase it here

Sales figures so far

Hi all,

As promised more posts. Here is the sales figure for 5 days so far.

Total downloads: 100
Commision paid to me: USD $1.4 per sales
Estimated profits: USD $140

Majority of the sales comes from USA. Second most downloaded region is Japan (pretty surprised considering I did no localization). Third coming in is Great Britain.

So no, you can't survive on iPhone apps alone.

iPhone flowchart application

Best regards.

My first iphone flowchart app up

Yes after all the wait and frustrations finally my first iPhone app is up! Of course there are some gotchas again. Most importantly for your W-8BEN submission the ITIN number is not really required, key in 000000000 also for item 9 select first and second checkbox, leave 10 empty as singapore have no tax treaty with the states. This got me for a while...trying to apply for ITIN from IRS...

you can have a look at my app here. anyway more post to come...oh I'm available for iPhone application consulting jobs in the meantime..(finding inspiration for next app still)

Creating Toolbar in iphone sdk

Here is how you can create a toolbar at the bottom of your screen. (with code taken from the UICatalog sample)

UIToolbar *bar = [UIToolbar new];
bar.barStyle = UIBarStyleBlackOpaque;

// size up the toolbar and set its frame
[bar sizeToFit];
CGFloat toolbarHeight = [bar frame].size.height;
CGRect mainViewBounds = self.view.bounds; //view of your viewcontroller
[bar setFrame:CGRectMake(CGRectGetMinX(mainViewBounds),
CGRectGetMinY(mainViewBounds) + CGRectGetHeight(mainViewBounds),
CGRectGetWidth(mainViewBounds),
toolbarHeight)];

//add button
// create a bordered style button with custom image
UIImage *im = [UIImage imageNamed:@"selection.png"];
UIBarButtonItem *selectItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithImage:im
style:UIBarButtonItemStylePlain
target:self
action:@selector(changeSelection:)];
selectItem.width = 50.0f; //you can set the width of the icon
selectItem.title= @"Selection"; //set text below image icon

//note the nil at the end
NSArray *items = [NSArray arrayWithObjects: selectItem,nil];
[bar setItems:items animated:NO];
[self.view addSubView:bar];
[selectItem release];
[bar release];

sizing UILabel accordingly to the height of the string

In my app I needed to resize the UILabel size dynamically in runtime as the text would not be determined during compilation time. Luckily this can be done by using the sizeWithFont method of NSString class.

1. Call sizeWithFont of the text.
2. Get back a CGSize struct and you can now init your UILabel with the struct.
   

UIFont *font = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:14];

CGSize textSize = [ myText sizeWithFont: font constrainedToSize: CGSizeMake(lineWidth, lineHeight*1000.0f) lineBreakMode: UILineBreakModeTailTruncation ];

UILabel *l = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(10,10,textSize.width,textSize.height)];

This took me awhile to find out..hope it helps you. Happy coding.

Objective C forward declaration

Was 'debugging' this for few hours, nothing more than not reading the documentations carefully. I needed to create a forward declaration of a class A in my class B as I would need to access some properties in class A.

However when compiling XCode was complaining to me about 'error: request for member in something not a structure or union'. Cracked my brain, tried rewriting my accessors in class A. Checking the access rights, property declarations, all was in order.

Finally did the google ritual and found out that to access properties in a forward declared class you must include the interface file in the implementation file of the class accessing. Too abstract to talk about here's the example:

Class B .h file

#import ....

//forward declare class a
@class A

@interface B

Class B .m file

//import interface file for class A
#import "classA.h"

@implementation B
....
A.someProperty = @"Got me there";

Hope this helps.. :)