iOS App delegates and nibs (noob alert)

[ryans79]

Hello!
I'm learning Obj - C and iphone programming at the same time, i have a beginners understanding of OBJ -C and am managing, but i seem to have confused myself into a corner (theory wise - my apps work, but i am finding it hard to follow the theory in the books when they talk about Application Delegates and NIBs)

1. Can someone kindly break down what is an Application Delegate
2. same, but this time "nib"
3. differences between the two.

°°
-Ryan

 

[dejo]

1. Taken from the Xcode Quick Tour for iPhone OS:
The application delegate is an object to which the UIApplication object delegates some of its responsibilities. A delegate allows you to customize or extend the behavior of a class without subclassing it.

2. Taken from the Interface Builder User Guide:
Each Interface Builder document stores information about one or more objects you want to create at runtime in your application. Most of these objects are visual in nature. Typical objects include windows, views, controls, and menus. Some application types let you specify non-visual objects as well, such as the controller objects your application uses to manage its windows and views. Note: Interface Builder documents are often referred to as “nib files” as a convenience and the two terms are considered synonymous. A nib file is simply the end result of an Interface Builder document.

3. I hope that based on the above you can see that application delegates and NIBs are very, very different kinds of objects.

 

[ryans79]

Thank you!

I tried checking out "CraigsHarvest" (via itunes) in your link, but its not available in my country, any other way to check it out?

 

[dejo]

I tried checking out "CraigsHarvest" (via itunes) in your link, but its not available in my country, any other way to check it out?

Check out our website for more info: http://www.another-roadside-attraction.com/craigsharvest/craigsharvest.html

Also, there's a review of the app here.

 

[ryans79]

Very cool!
A few questions, how long did it take you to make that app?
what were the hardest parts (please note i dont have an iphone withe me so i cant follow along any instructions to come to that part) to code?

Good sales?
I ask this only because like all learning developers, i hope to one day have some of my apps in the store, am still not 100% sure if its worth the time and effort to learn and code/create something new.

Cheers!
R

 

[robbieduncan]

Very cool!
A few questions, how long did it take you to make that app?
what were the hardest parts (please note i dont have an iphone withe me so i cant follow along any instructions to come to that part) to code?

Can you program already (well, proficiently and without significant errors) in another language? Debug your code? If not then you have a very steep learning curve ahead of you.

If you are already an accomplished programmer learning Objective-C will take a couple of hours, learning the Cocoa/Cocoa-Touch paradigms and basics a day or so. After that the time to code an application will depend 100% on the application: complexity, polish required, testing and so on. Anything from a few hours to months and months.

 

[ryans79]

Can you program already (well, proficiently and without significant errors) in another language? Debug your code? If not then you have a very steep learning curve ahead of you.

If you are already an accomplished programmer learning Objective-C will take a couple of hours, learning the Cocoa/Cocoa-Touch paradigms and basics a day or so. After that the time to code an application will depend 100% on the application: complexity, polish required, testing and so on. Anything from a few hours to months and months.

Hey,
Well, a couple of years back i used to program with Java, then i started using Servlets to program for the web, then switched over to LAMP, so i have been programming for years.

I was just curious as to the time he took to make that app, Obj-C took me around 2-3 days (but I am not fantastic at it, just good enough to understand most things, but sometimes i confuse myself into a corner )

Cheers!

 

[dejo]

A few questions, how long did it take you to make that app?

CraigsHarvest took about a month and a half of mostly part-time development by me, the main developer. I was able to build upon experience gained from previous smaller apps I had written, usually by accident. Those apps included [app]a.k.a.[/app] and Score! (the latter of which is no longer for sale due to loss of data feed). But then it took three months of back and forth with Apple to tweak the content filtering in order to get their approval.

what were the hardest parts (please note i dont have an iphone withe me so i cant follow along any instructions to come to that part) to code?

The hardest parts were figuring out how to build the URLs to pull the data from craigslist' sites (i.e. mapping categories and locations into URL codes) as well as figuring out how to consolidate the search results from multiple locations and subcategories into one list. Dealing with some of the UI issues of bringing in the various views also presented some challenges.

Good sales?

Moderate. We've seen an average of about 13 sales per day. And have sold almost a thousand copies so far. Not nearly as much as we would like and certainly not enough to provide full-time-equivalent income. We'd love to see 13 sales per hour instead of per day but, as a "working" app, it's harder to compete with the many "non-working" apps that appeal to juveniles.

P.S. But a major accomplishment today, we feel, is that CraigsHarvest is now on the Featured - New list on the App Store on the iPhone. We hope this spurs a decent spike in sales.

 

[ryans79]

Hey!

Thanks for your reply and answering all my questions, I was not sure the last would be answered but I'm happy it was.

an average of about 13 sales per day. And have sold almost a thousand copies so far. Not nearly as much as we would like and certainly not enough to provide full-time-equivalent income. We'd love to see 13 sales per hour instead of per day

LOL! I bet! From what I read i think its a new app, give it some time, i hope you get there.

If I do anything with URL harvesting, i know who to tap for help now!

Good luck in future sales and congrats on hitting the Featured List!

Cheers!
R