Does anyone know of a good tutorial on iPhone GUI design using just code and not Interface Builder?
I am new to iPhone development, and I wanted to better understand what is going on behind the scenes.
Does anyone know of a good tutorial on iPhone GUI design using just code and not Interface Builder?
I am new to iPhone development, and I wanted to better understand what is going on behind the scenes.
Just a caveat: it's best to do things the "Apple way", as it will make it easier for Apple's engineers to comb through your code and approve it for the App Store.
Jonathan Zdziarski's iPhone SDK abandons the designer after the first two chapters. The rest of the book contains examples that create UI elements with code.
Bill Dudney has a couple of blog posts on "Demystifying iPhone App Startup" and "Demystifying View Controllers and Views" that provide good walkthroughs of some of what goes on behind the scenes, UI-wise. While not about programmatic generation of your views, these posts help you understand what Interface Builder does for you.
Check out the UI Catalog example in the SDK.
It showcases all of the individual controls being used in multiple ways. All of the screens, the view controllers and the navigation bars are generated from code.
I found Erica Sadun's The iPhone Developer's Cookbook really valuable. The book assumes you're already up to speed with Objective-C and her examples are short but focused. Most of her examples build up the GUI programmatically, which I found really helpful in understanding what IB is doing for you.
The new iPhone SDK 3 Visual Quickstart Guide book from PeachPit exclusively uses code for all it's examples - no IB.
http://mark.aufflick.com/bookshelf#0321669533
Disclaimer: The author of that book attends Sydney CocoaHeads which I organise :)