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
Responding to Reviews on the App Store
Following last weeks changes in the app store to allow responses to app store reviews, Apple have published a great set of material to guide you through the whole process and how to handle things. Definitely worth reading.
apple.com
Sponsored Link
New Book: RxSwift – Reactive Programming with Swift
The popularity of reactive programming continues to grow on an ever-increasing number of platforms and languages. In “RxSwift: Reactive Programming with Swift”, you’ll learn how to use RxSwift to create complex reactive applications on iOS, and how to easily solve common application design issues as well. By the end of the book, you’ll be able to exercise full control over the RxSwift library and leverage the full power of reactive programming in your apps!
raywenderlich.com
Design
How to Make Your In-App Permissions Less Scary For Your Users
Asking for in-app permissions is always a disruption to a users workflow but is a necessity for the correct function of many apps. In this article, @Appseecom provide some tips on how to make things a little less scary for your users and provide some useful guidance for when you do have to ask.
prototypr.io
Swift
What’s New in Swift 3.1
Swift 3.1 has introduced a number of changes to the Swift language. @KaramazovShogun provides a useful summary if you’re looking to get up to speed.
raywenderlich.com
Avoiding Primitive Obsession in Swift
@amlcurran encourages you to make use of the power of the Swift language and move away from passing things around as String‘s or Int‘s and instead make use of some of Swift’s more expressive capabilities to make your code clearer and more expressive. It’s good advice.
medium.com
Code
Swift… Swift Everywhere
With Swift now available on both the front and back-end we now have the ability to develop full-stack solutions entirely in Swift. @darthpelo provides a great tutorial on the basics, using the power of Swift to create an iOS app and Vapor server to bring light to the world. Great starter project! ?
medium.com
A Beginner’s Guide to Bezier Paths and Shape Layers
Is custom drawing your thing? @gabtheodor has a nice beginners guide on how to create your own custom views using UIBezier Path and CAShape Layers.
appcoda.com
Tools
Automating App Store Screenshots
Uploading screenshots to the app store can be a PITA with the combination of phone sizes, locales and the individual screen shots adding to the multitude of shots that you need to upload. However, life gets a lot easier with Fastlane’s snapshot tool. @bryanjclark shows you how.
khanacademy.org
New Features in the Xcode 8.2 Simulator
There’s been a number of new features added to the Simulator with the release of Xcode 8.2 many of which I hadn’t come across. @hollanderbart provides a run-down.
medium.com
Xcode Tricks: API Changes
Nice tip from @ericasadun on how to use Xcode to view the changes between different SDK releases.
ericasadun.com
Libraries
CHIPageControl
A set of animated page controls to replace the boring transitions of UIPageControl. Written entirely in Swift.
github.com
FengNiao
A command line tool from @onevcat for cleaning unused resources from your Xcode projects. Don’t let the cruft build up!
github.com
LoginKit
LoginKit by @icalialabs is a quick and easy way to add Facebook and email login / signup to your apps and includes a complete interface for user account creation and field validation.
github.com
Videos
Clear As A Bell: Sharing Technical Expertise
Passing on skills from one person to another occurs all the time. Whether it be reading blog posts, watching videos or working with other members of your development team @savinola has some great tips on how to make sure you are passing on your skills and knowledge in the best way possible and also how to make that knowledge stick for the people on the receiving end. I’ll definitely be taking some of these ideas on board.
skilled.io
Swift’s Pointy Bits: Unsafe Swift & Pointer Types
Swift goes to great lengths to ensure the safety of your code through the use of strong typing, value semantics and protecting your from direct memory access. However, there are times when we need by-pass these safety features to directly allocate and access memory. Swift allows this through it’s unsafe API’s and in this talk, @nnnnnnnn discusses some of the finer points of Swift’s pointer types including how to stay safe when using them.
realm.io
Other
The 1 Percent Rule: Why a Few People Get the Most Rewards
With the ever changing Apple development landscape it can be easy to become overwhelmed. Whether it’s you, your skills, your apps or your business, @james_clear provides a great reminder on the impact of small, regular improvements over time. It’s worth taking a moment to think about.
jamesclear.com
Comment
Welcome to another issue of Swift Developments and congratulations if you’re one of the lucky few who wanted, and actually got, a ticket to WWDC! If you weren’t lucky enough to get one this tweet sums things up perfectly. Enjoy the links, have a great week and go make something great!