Swift Developments is a hand-curated newsletter containing a weekly selection of the best links, videos, tools and tutorials for people interested in designing and developing their own apps using Swift.
Business
Why 7 Seconds Could Make Or Break Your App
Whichever way you look at it, first impressions count and this as relevant to your app store listing as it is to meeting people in person. In this article, @petrfodor presents some interesting research and some useful advice on making the the best impression you can in those first few seconds when a potential user comes across your listing.
asostack.com
Design
Why Mobile Menus Belong at the Bottom of the Screen
Designing and developing mobile apps undoubtedly has different constraints to those of designing applications for the desktop and yet commonly, we continue to use the design patterns we see in desktop apps in our mobile designs. One example of this is putting our mobile menus toward the top of the screen but there may be a better way. @uxmovement is here to show you how.
uxmovement.com
Swift
Handling Empty Optional Strings in Swift
A nice tip from @nathanwchan on how to handle empty optional strings in Swift. Extensions to the rescue!
medium.com
The Strange Case of Mapping Over Optionals
Nice article from @gregheo on some of the subtle differences between using map and flatMap on collections that contain optional values and also how those same methods work when applying them to optional values directly.
swiftunboxed.com
Why Coroutines
With the potential introduction of Async/Await functionality being discussed in Swift Evolution community at the moment, @jemmons has written an interesting but undoubtedly forward-looking article on coroutines that explores how they might be used and some of the benefits they may bring to asynchronous Swift code.
figure.ink
Code
Smart Gesture Recognition in iOS 11 with CoreML and TensorFlow
@mitochrome looks at how to leverage the power of TensorFlow and CoreML to detect and recognise advanced gestures into your iOS apps such as hearts, checkmarks and happy faces.
hackernoon.com
Using Braintree to Accept Credit Card Payment in iOS Apps
With mobile e-commerce continuing to grow and more and more companies wishing to take payments directly within their apps, @ziad_tamim has written a nice tutorial on how to implement credit card processing within your own app.
appcoda.com
Why I’m Not Completely Sold on the ARKit Revolution
Since its launch, ARKit has been enthusiastically received by the developer community and some seriously impressive demo’s have appeared but will this new framework fundamentally change the way that users interact with the mobile devices? @SkarredGhost is not so sure.
hackernoon.com
Using SpriteKit to Create Custom watchOS Loading Animations
@coryb with a short example on how to use SpriteKit to create your own loading spinner and how to integrate your shiny new spinner into your watchOS app.
martiancraft.com
Tools
Secret Variables in Xcode AND your CI for fun and profit
Storing sensitive information such as passwords, API keys or email addresses in your git repo is never a good idea but this type of data is sometimes a necessary evil when it comes to testing and integration. So if you’re not using a CI solution already provides a workaround for this problem what are you to do? @codeOfRobin looks for an alternative solution.
medium.com
Libraries
KUIPopOver
Popovers made easy with this Swift library from @Kofktu
github.com
Collor
A MVVM data-oriented framework from @VoyagesSncf_UK for simplifying the creation of UICollectionView‘s.
github.com
Other
Writing Imperfect Code
At some point in your programming adventures, you’ll have no doubt heard someone recommending code that is DRY – but the longer you spend tapping away at the keyboard, the more you’ll realise that although this and many of the other ‘rules’ are generally good advice, there are also occasions when they can, and should be broken. Nice article from @harlankellaway on balancing perfectionism and pragmatism in your code.
prolificinteractive.com
Comment
So I spent most of this week consciously trying to avoid any spoilers that may have leaked onto the interweb as I wanted to maintain those ooooo and ahhhh moments that I enjoy when watching Apple Events. With that said, in just a few hours time I’ll be able to drop my increasingly complex avoidance tactics and we’ll finally get to see all the new goodies that Apple have in store for us! In the mean time though, enjoy this weeks links, have a great week, also enjoy the keynote (if you’re watching it!)