The following is a REALLY brief overview of what @ctp went into in his WWDC’11 talk which you can watch online here (if you’re an apple developer and logged into developer.apple.com)

The new appearance proxies let us call methods such as setBackgroundImage: forBarMetrics: on our bars and bar button items so we can really give our apps a good polishing up. Normally we’d call these methods as follows:

[myToolbar setBackgroundImage:myUIImage forBarMetrics:UIBarMetricsDefault];

So very simple, and all these methods are now fully documented. There are very slight variations in the appearance methods per control so it it worth referring to the documentation to save a headache or two when things don’t go right.

Not only can you set appearance properties for instances of classes, you can set them for a class in general. Think how your categories worked. You can change the appearance of UINavigationBar across you entire app in one swoop:

[[UINavigationBar apperence] setBackgroundImage:… forBarMetrics:…];

Many UIKit classes now have an appearance property. This passes back the appearance proxy for that class, and once you’ve made changes any instance of that class from the point of you modified the appearance will look sexy. If you create an instance of a control before you modify the appearance proxy you must re-initialise/redraw that instance for modifications to take effect.

One more thing. So you know how to modify the appearance of a single instance as well as the appearance for all instances of that class. But you can also define specific appearance properties depending on what the control is contained in. For example, if I wanted to change a navigation bar’s appearance solely when it’s present in MyViewController I would do so like this:

[[UINavigationBar apperenceWhenContainedIn:[MyViewController class], nil] …];

Really simple eh? Instead of calling appearance you simple specify a nil terminated list of containers for which these changes should take effect in.

This new addition to iOS now means you shouldn’t have to write another swizzle or category for simply prettify your bars and buttons.

Turns out many, many developers are using thrid party compilers to create iPhone apps now. Some writing in Java (wasn’t there a JS-Cocoa at one point?), others making games in flash and building them out to iOS using some bastardized Adobe tools. While I’m sure this is enabling them to build games and utilites in a language with which they are familiar, I have a strong suspicion that all it actually does is hurt the end user and the platform.

So you go to make your epic-new-awesome-rpg type game, but you engineer it all in flash and these choose to compile it for iPhone. This may seem very attractive to the developer. Releasing your new game in the popular AppStore. Think of the dollars. The problems come as soon as there is a bug. It was working fine as flash, but when a third party is required to bridge between the APIs you’re sure to encounter a problem at some point, and the people this will affect directly is your customers. Customers love to complain. It’s their right, they paid for your app, yet you can’t fix the issue until Adobe releases the fix in its own tools. The customer has to wait. Now you’re just making the platform look bad.

My advice to anyone who wants to write apps for a specific platform is learn the language. Ofcourse as with everything its going to be tricky at first, but you’ll learn how to do more than your third party crap ever let you do, and you’ll even know how to go about fixing your own bugs.

This isn’t a post about a lack-of-love for cross platform languages. I’m all for using them, but only where the platform directly allows for it. Andriod apps should be written in Java, its the phones first language, Obj-c for iPhone, its what is knows best.

I’m sure you’ve been in a situation speaking to someone in a second langauge, its just not the same is it?

I have also implemented a new way in which a user scrolls through an articles content replacing the default iOS scroll bar functionality with a new paradigm I thought up whilst having a bath. This new paradigm focuses on navigating an article you’re reading showing your progress through the article and allowing you to touch a position to start reading from.

The user interface and all other graphic goodness for Novus is being produced by the wonderful Robbie Pearce (@heartofpixels) however the initial beta releases of Novus will be typical iOS UI as I want to nail the functionality before applying the lipstick.

Just before I sign off, we’re still allowing you fine ladies and gentle men to register you interest in helping us test Novus. Please only apply if you’re actually interested in reading articles from feeds. If you’re applying to simply brag about an app only you and 40 others have then you’re doing it wrong. If you want to play with my buggy pre-release software at some point in the near future then apply to be a beta tester.

But how do I know this will make prospective users happy? Will this be a way in which they’d want to interact with Google Reader, or do they really just want a dumb client?

My idea with novus is to do as apple do. Make it powerful while keeping tasks simple to do. Hopefully this approach means the app will we both desirable to both novice and pro feed users. Building in advance sharing options that can be turned on and off by the user clearing menu space an buttons off alert sheets. Making toolbars clever. Similar to how Tapbots did this in tweetbot.

Hopefully with more developers adhering to this approach it will become possible to keep the majority of users content with your app. Let them use it how they see fit.

The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.

They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things.

They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Steve Jobs Apple CEO April 1, 1976 – end of May 1985, September 1997 - August 24th, 2011

Dribbblish was the result. Dribbblish was to me a quick fondling of the Dribbble API but it really took off with @Dribbble users getting tens of thousands of views as people tweeted their profiles being shown in Dribbblish (to view your own profile simply add your username to then end of the URL!).

But what am I going to do with Dribbblish now? Well I plan to do nothing else with it myself. Many people wanted it to be turned into a more public facing application allowing people to make theme-able @Dribbble powered portfolios. This however was never going to happen as its of my opinion that @Dribbble should be used for its original purpose, feedback on your works in progress. However I do now plan to stick the Dribbblish source up on Github over the coming days so should people really want their own Dribbblish portfolio they can, but it won’t be my fault when @Dribbble becomes a showcase site.

Twiba development began in early 2009 however due to some issues that I’ve discussed before (many, many times) development slowed. However today I’m announcing that I’ve stepped down from heading up development on Twiba due to work commitments as I just don’t have the time Twiba development demands. I still will be working on my other products it’s simply I don’t have the time Twiba deserves.

Update: @gabriel_rinaldi is now developing @TwibaApp

In other news, Novus development has progressed with Google Syncing now nearing completion with adding and removing feeds. Beta testers who registered interest in testing will soon be informed if they’ll be testing Novus.

I hope you’re all as excited as me to see what the new developer of Twiba will bring to the table and I’ll still be there to support them and offer my help when I can.

The access a views layer using the ‘layer’ property and commence drawing shenanigans.

UIView *myView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(30, 30, 260, 260)]; 

/* It's important to remember to pass CG structs like floats and CGColors */
[[myView layer] setShadowOffset:CGSizeMake(0, 1)];
[[myView layer] setShadowColor:[[UIColor darkGrayColor] CGColor]];
[[myView layer] setShadowRadius:3.0];
[[myView layer] setShadowOpacity:0.8];

This code example would give you a nice UIView with a neat little drop shadow all via the power of CoreAnimation Layers. There is much, much more you can accomplish simply and quickly by using layers such as masking to layer bounds, using a UIImage as an alpha mask, borders and so on and so forth! Oh, and of course the great ability to animate it all with CAAnimation.

I hope this helped somewhat.
Tim
Notice: @fluter pointed out on Twitter than these methods are only available on 3.2+ but I’m assuming we’re not working to such an old OS spec now are we?

On a device where you have the chance to create experiences based around touch and gestures it seems many still rely on basic Apple controls choosing to use buttons over clever and natural gestures and/or touches (this is especially noticeable when in the applications description the developer users the term click over tap or touch).

As a developer if your product brings innovation, unique and natural user experience and a wholesome and good looking interface then there is always the chance you’ll blow your competition away.

Innovate or be left behind.

I was going through a DropBox folder of mine that I fill with all the apps and little collections of code that I either wrote for fun or never bothered to finish. I stumbled across an app I started a while ago that had a few names, most notably Gazette and Bulletin. I then turned to my iPhone and iPad and it struck me. There wasn’t a stand alone news reader that was universal and didn’t require you to use Google Reader. Well at least one I liked (I’m most fickle).

Now I know many people love Google Reader and use it daily, and good for them. However I myself am not a die hard RSS fan but I do like to have a place I can go and catch up with news. Novus is my vision of an RSS news reader. It may not be your ideal reader but let me explain it to you. Novus will work as a stand alone reader. It won’t require Google Reader to use but I’m sure I’ll work to build it in should people desperately want it, but for me Google Reader support isn’t the be all and end all of RSS.

Novus will have a listings part of the application. Should you want to find a new feed while in the app, you can discover similar feeds from a user populated listings section of the application. I know I’ll often want to know other peoples’ opinions on something I’ve just read so from within Novus I can simply bring up listings and search for similar feeds.

This is but the tip of the iceberg that is Novus. If you want to know more you can follow @getnovus or the creators @tmdvs (myself) or @heartofpixels (my forever patient partner who happens to be a pixel pusher too).