AppForce1: news and info for iOS app developers

Stack view and micro app architectures…

September 20, 2021 Jeroen Leenarts Episode 47
AppForce1: news and info for iOS app developers
Stack view and micro app architectures…
AppForce1: news and info for iOS app developers +
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Show Notes Transcript

This week I wanted to make a big announcement, but I still have to sit on it for one more week. Monday will also be my 100th episode. Still can’t wrap my head around that though.

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Jeroen Leenarts:

Hi, and welcome to the 47th episode of my podcast. My name is Leenarts. And I've been developing software for over 19 years developing iOS apps for over nine years and I'm running the Dutch cocoa has for over eight years. If you're an iOS app developer, you should listen to my podcast because it will keep you updated on interesting articles, conferences and events you might not have heard about. In this episode, I'm going to talk about a cool sketch notes of the Apple event. An Introduction to micro app architectures, barcode detection using vision framework, stack few changes in iOS 15 disclosure group in Swift UI, how to apply a reverse mask in Swift UI, and Danny's Monday morning tweets. I was planning to do some big announcements in this episode. But I'm still waiting for some stuff to come through. So maybe next episode, which will be actually my 100 recording that I will be publishing next week on Monday. Maybe then I'll have some big announcements. In the meantime, I will keep you updated with the articles. And I will let you know how things progress, you could keep an eye on my Twitter, because once I have it done, and I can announce it, I will make sure to post it there as well. Former keyboards, I actually ordered blank key caps, so that has no leverage on them anymore. Why am I doing this, I noticed that I'm looking a lot at my keyboard just for the letters for finding them when I'm typing. And I want to like remove that attraction of my keyboards by just removing all the letter faces on my keycaps. And our hope it's it will help improve my typing even further. Because with this split layout keyboard that I'm using, it's it's amazing how quick I can actually type nowadays. Also, my daughter is really enjoying her time. It's cool, and she's developing nicely. And she is getting more and more into her own self. And she's having way less temper tantrums and issues in general, which is great. My son on the other hand, for some reason, he decided that everything that my wife and I tried to ask him, it's definitely a no. And he sticks with the now. So we've been struggling with him for two weeks to get through to him and to make him understand a three year old that he should actually listen to his parents, which usually in the ante always does. But it can be a struggle, sometimes. Also, I have a few great guests lined up for the coming weeks, I say some, but actually, if I look at my schedule, I have nine interviews planned at the moment. And I have three recorded and one ready to publish on Thursday. So that's a whole ton of recordings that I'm still planning to do with guests. So everybody, thank you for the input and for the response on Twitter, because that really helped with filling out my schedule for the rest of the year. In regards to podcast guests, there is one special thing that I'm planning soon, I will have a mechanical keyboards session with a couple of iOS developers who are quite enthusiastic about mechanical keyboards, maybe in a way like I am maybe even worse. And regardless whether or not you like keyboards in some extended way beyond it's a device that you use for typing, I think the guests that will be onboard in this session will be very interesting. And that irregardless of your preferences, it will be a great conversation to listen to. So I look forward to putting that together in the coming weeks. And once I have it recorded and safely stored my backups, which I use Backblaze I will make sure to announce a date for this event as well because this is going to be awesome. I'm actually recording while updating all my devices by now. My iPhone is updated and my Apple Watch is updated. I still need to do an iPad and testing device an iPhone, I have some old version. So yeah, it's really fun to actually be recording to have something to do while my phone is unavailable. And while I watch is unavailable. So hopefully things work as they're supposed to wants to once I'm done recording, and then I can just see what the internet says on this iOS 15 release that's now live. So just to get started, let's go to the first LinkedIn I want to share with you. It's actually a tweet by Philly de hemos tromelin. It's it's an Apple event sketch notes of the Apple event in September, which is quite a nice image and it's a good overview of the things that were announced. So just because it's such a nice picture, I wanted to do a shout out to this Apple event sketch notes. I really like it and should you should definitely have a look at Phillipa 444. That's the Twitter handle of the person who actually drew this sketch notes. Another article I want to mention is the Meet the micro apps architecture the article titled An Introduction to micro apps What a micro apps? Well, it's a bit like microservices, you take segregates areas of your implementation, and you split them up in separate modules really. And this allows you to give modules to specific teams as their main responsibility. And it has some similarities with microservices architectures. But instead of using services you're dealing with, with frameworks that are really small. And I always have some difficulty explaining people what a micro framework or a micro app architecture actually is about. So at its core, a micro apps application is a network of loosely coupled, highly cohesive models with high level feature modules, relying on lower level utility ones. So you get a hierarchy of frameworks of modules that work together to create the the feature and the functionality that you want to present to your end users. There are some benefits to using this. And to estado is like a great utility to actually create a setup of such architecture in Xcode. And yeah, this this article is just a clear overview of what it is about. And if you find it interesting, you can just dive in deeper with all the tools that are available to actually create such a framework as well. So rune has created a great couple articles. How you can use to is to create a micro framework type architecture for your Xcode project. So that's some hands on stuff that you can use. So enough about this article, definitely read up, see what you think about it, and let me know on Twitter the next article that I want to talk about is barcode detection using vision framework. In his previous articles, Camille focused on detecting people in images. Starting from how the body and limbs are positioned to space and finishing on try to understand the mood of the person based on face landmarks. All this information can tell you a lot about people and the situation they are in. But this is not all that the phishing framework can do. So this guy has written some interesting articles on using the vision framework. Barcode detection may not sound as interesting as the other facial framework features, but it has a special place in Camille's heart. A couple years ago, he was working on an application where scanning fares barcodes, QR and others was one of the key features that wasn't the first party solution back then. So you had to go to library and his life, Camille's life would have been much simpler if the vision framework was already available. So in this article, Camille wants to introduce you to the V and detect barcode request. This request is versatile and can detect QR s tech UPC and many more barcodes and QR code type images. So as a result, it provides a rectangle containing the code and decoded payloads, which basically all you need when you want to scan something visually, that resembles a barcode or QR codes. So in this article, Camille details how you can use this feat and detect barcodes request and how you can actually extract the information from it. So it's a nice overview to actually see what kind of image codes functionality there is available in efficient framework and how you can actually use this in your application. So definitely have a look if you ever need to do some barcode scanning or QR scanning in your application as well. The next article is by Keith Harrison. On use your loaf.com Stack View changed in iOS 15. Apple didn't add any new features to the stack views in iOS 15. But they have made a subtle change to the implementation that might catch you off guard when deploying back to earlier iOS versions. So there's a there's some difference between iOS 14 and 15. And Keith details what those are. So have a look at his article and make sure that you test your app with a stack view on both iOS 14 and iOS 15. The next articles but Gabriel disclosure groups in Swift UI, Swift UI was meant to be a game changer in the user interface implementation process. And even though it still lacks some features, it allows you to create UI as much faster compared to arcades and applicate. Built in views that would otherwise require a significant effort and numbers of lines to create manually enable you to achieve beautiful results within seconds. In this post dedicated to such a swift UI view, a few that is usually overlooked until one actually needs it. And that's the disclosure group. A disclosure group is a view that shows or hides another content field based on the state of disclosure control. First of all, of course, Gabriel shows what his view is about. And then he discloses how you can actually use this disclosure group to make certain elements of your user interface disappear and expand when you need them to. So it's a very convenient little control that you've seen all over iOS probably. And the disclosure group in Swift UI is very convenient to use. And if you want to know how, then have a look at the article but Gabriel, since I had such a lot of fun with all the few masking and stuff that Federico shared the last few weeks, I want to reference See his next article in this podcast episodes as well how to apply a reverse mask in Swift UI. So in the last two articles, he covered swift UI, clipping and masking. And in this final article of his series, he wants to explore what you can do beyond what swift UI offers out of the box. So refers masking. Yeah, it's interesting what he tries to do there, basically, you have a mask, but then you apply it like in the opposite fashion, so that instead of cutting something out, you got something away, you could say, that's, it's a fun read, it brings together the previous two articles as well, in in one concise overview of fun things you can do with reverse masking. And I'll probably have some fun with this as well this week. So Federico, thank you for these great three articles and have a look yourself to see what you can do with reverse fuel masking. And now on to Donny Sam, on the morning tweet, I expect a lot of people saying that they're going to be testing on iOS 15, or are they're installing it on their own devices. So let's see what people had to say on this Monday. Peter freezer. This week, Peter finished switch wavefront NT built for a sample app that is working on with a Firebase extension. Of course, Peter would be working on Firebase extensions, right because he's the developer advocate at the Firebase team. Earlier today, I actually interviewed Peter from a podcast, we had a lot of fun. And in a couple of weeks time, I have my interview with Peter available on my feed as well. Pablo wishes Donnie a Happy Monday. And he doesn't know if it counts, but he saw a trade recommending notions. And he's got to say that it's a tool that he's going to try for to organize some projects and ideas. So far, it reminds him of confluence, but then with a more nicer and friendlier UI. Daniel Steinberg replies as well, he reports that he successfully updates his swift UI training, and when creates, and he's considering offering it publicly, perhaps as a video series. And he's also preparing a conference talk for October 1. Returning to bread baking, again, because Daniel likes to do talks that relate in some way to baking bread. And I really look forward to the content that Daniel has installed for us limited DFS has, has a nice reference to link for people doing their updates for iOS 15, you upload your iOS 15 update of your app. And then Apple reports that you're not allowed to mention pre release software in your in your app, which is iOS 15. But they had the gold master available. And Moe is starting another project using pencil kits earlier this month. And it's starting to slowly take shape. So he's hand drawing some images for it. So that's also taking a lot of time Phillip mentioned that he launched a new thing. It's actually the in the app catalog, you should definitely check it out in the catalog dot app. And Caymans is building an ancient board game collection for iOS reviving games like Netflix a fall back child or Lateran. Truly, I have never heard about any of these games. But hey, so he has a test flight link that you can join. So look at daanish threat from the shownotes to find this tweet. And maybe it's something for you. Michael Tigges is working on moving all his hard coded strings from a product into a localized strings file, so that he can just easily localize the app and make sure that it's more accessible to people who speak another language. Francois Bhula is working on sales body an iOS app to watch app store connect sales and trends. So it has some animated GIF in there as well. And it's I think it looks okay. It still needs some work, but it's getting there. So who knows. And Jeff Hackworth is wishing duniya Good morning as well. He would love to learn something but app refuse seems to have other plans. And then he posts some screenshots of Apple few having some issues with this with this app, which is unfortunate, of course, Duncan is, is adopting Xcode clouds. So he received the invites of Xcode clouds on the 29th of June is beginning to adopt it in his in his product. And the added defeat goes on and on. And what I do tend to see is a lot of people are publishing to the App Store or getting refueled replies or they're actually done with to work for this evening. So yeah, everybody good luck with all the App Store updates and getting all these new features in iOS 15 supported and I wish everybody a nice week after all this hard work getting ready for the launch of iOS 15. And I hope everything works out of course. And I also really hope that I can share my big news with everybody soon. So hang in there and talk to you again next week. If If you have any feedback on my podcast please let me know at Air Force One on Twitter