Here are some features:

• Filter
• Growl Support
• Status Item Visibility

There are many known issues with this build involving performance and various UI options. Please forward/email any issues or requests to myself.

NSString *versionNumber = CFBundleGetValueForInfoDictionaryKey(CFBundleGetMainBundle(),
                                                  kCFBundleVersionKey);

No more manual version number mistakes!

Hitting up Google I found that there wasn’t many users like me and that this was a rare case. I did come across a couple people that did have the same issue. Since xcode looks at your certificates on your computer with iPhone Developer: First Last, you shouldn’t have the same certificate on the same login. Create yourself a new account on your mac and create your iPhone Developer certificate there. You will have to login to that account to develop for one team then another for the next. Make sure to follow the correct steps in the Program Portal on creating a developer certificate.

This method could potentially be a hassle. Another fix from another user that has not been tested yet is to create a new keychain. Make sure the keychain is not set to default. Point your project implicitly to that certificate instead of the other. Unfortunately I haven’t test this and for those that have or have an article to pass, feel free to comment.

Lastly, another potential fix… don’t install another development certificate on your computer! If your working with another team, just use your development certificate that is already installed to build. It won’t hurt anyone and causes less heartache. Figure a way to install two certificates on one mac if you absolutely have to.

Recycler has launches in the App store this weekend. It is the first environmentally friendly iPhone application helping you keep track of what plastic recyclables are allowed in your local pickup. Plastic recycling doesn’t need to be a headache anymore. The UI in the application is nice on the eyes. Custom buttons were also created in order to distinguish this application over others. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Here is the official page.

RemindMe.app, example for CocoaHeads talk

The next CocoaHeads San Diego chapter will be meeting at Gelato Vero October 23rd, 2008. I’m excited about heading the group in San Diego and looking forward to future talks about Mac and iPhone development. The October 23rd CocoaHeads San Diego will be discussing advantages of using Growl and integrating them into your Mac applications. I created some source code to bring to the talk and discuss. It can be found here.

I feel the San Diego development community is pretty small at this point and the meetings will be pretty casual. As I have promised, there will be cup cakes. It will start at 7pm so you should tell your friends and stop by for a bit. You can download and play around with the sample code before coming. We will be meeting on the second floor of the cafe. Again this is open to beginners as well, so come by for some gelato or coffee. Gelato Vero is located at 3753 India St, San Diego, CA 92103. There is free wifi.

As far as future CocoaHeads goes, we will be addressing the iPhone SDK in more in depth as well now that the NDA has been lifted. The October 23rd meeting is also open to Growl discussion.

Thank you for all your support and great ideas, keep them coming.

You can check it out here.

Playing around with version 2.1 firmware, most of the nice touches and performance issues have been cleared away. Slow contact search, crashing apps, text message keyboard lag, and many other annoying elements that made the touch experience not a pleasant one. When things lag, it feels like your rubbing on a piece of glass and not a touch device. Although things are not perfect at the moment, they have definitely increased speed significantly and added some nice UI features. Although this feels like this should have been the original 2.0 upgrade.

We have had the iPhone 2.0 for 3 months as beta testers. Sound familiar? This is an Apple trend. Apple’s software always has lagged behind their hardware. I think Apple has done a great job of meeting deadlines with SDK and iPhone 2.0 firmware, but they did bring out a buggy and slow product. Lets see what happens in the future with other releases and how beta they are. At some point it will be expected of Apple products and people just won’t by them at initial launch. Will that be likely? Probably not, if you thought the lines were bad last 3g release, expect worse in the next version.

Also check out the nice review and video from ismashphone… ISmashPhone Review.

Constants

Create a constants folder in your apps package contents under com.companyname.applicationname.constants. This folder will hold all your constants in your application. This doesn’t include any event constants, keep those in your event classes. We are talking about your media library, application states, and so forth. This is also a good spot to insert any other specific states you want to implement in your application as well.

Don’t Be Shy About Building Commands

Create as many commands as you see fit. Sometimes building a Cairngorm based application, it feels like putting a engine together but you are missing parts. Create commands for the simplest of operations and give good names. For instance, if you want to run a ’save’ function, it would be good practice to have these commands, InitializeSaveDocumentCommand, DoSaveDocumentCommand, and IsFinishedSaveDocumentCommand. We could event branch these out further if need be. It might seem overkill but in the end, in a large application, this could come handy. Its nice to call events in the similar fashion where the event calling those commands would be called SaveDocumentEvent.

Command Organization

There will be many a commands created in a standard Cairngorm application. Twenty to thirty is common, but some could reach over 100 and beyond. The com.companyname.applicationname.commands folder can become a monster. A good way to manage this is to sub folder into Events that drive them. That way your SaveDocument commands would end up in com.companyname.applicationname.commands.savedocument.* .

Data Transfer Objects

I like to use the term DTO( data transfer objects ) more than value objects. Therefore I like to rename my vo folder to dto. Create and extend many of these objects as they will help you code complete in Flex Builder and overall get organized.

Other Hints

Use short cuts where you can. Here is a few that I can’t live without:

• ctrl-space - use this for code complete, a must. This is particularly useful when getting your model locator or long command names.
• (apple or ctrl)-mouse click - this will being you to the source code of the class you clicked on in the Flex Builder IDE. Unfortunately this doe not work for compiled code
• shift-(apple or ctrl)-c - this will comment any code that you have hi-lighted

Happy coding Flex developers.

Links in this article

Cairngorm