Issue 36

11 September 2019

by Lori M Olson

This is an all community links edition. To clear out my backlog, and because I have pneumonia (cough, haaaack) and I’m too tired to do anything else. —wndxlori\

#COMM—Community

We’re pulling for wndxlori’s speedy recovery! It’s just not the same place when she’s not around. But in her absence, y’know what that means: the monkeys are officially in charge of the zoo, so who knows how this is going to turn out. As she mentioned, though, we have selected what we think are the best of the backlog of #COMM items which have stacked up over the last couple of months. Without further ado:

Support (All) The Screen Sizes!

Back in March Simon Fairbairn wrote a great piece about game development which deals with the madhouse that is Apple mobile device screen sizes. In that first article, he provided what he described as “ugly hacks” for reducing the workload of supporting all those devices. Subsequently, he revisited the subject yet one more time in Screen Sizes. Again. This was triggered by iOS 12.1’s much more restrictive approach to memory management. For anybody who is doing game development targeted at the broadest possible range of devices—and who isn’t?—both articles are well worth your time.

(Much) Better App Store Screenshots with simctl

If you are a little less than pleased with how the status bar appears in your App Store screenshots, you finally have the control you’ve always wanted. Neil Sardesai provides a great, one line example on how you can use simctl to override the status bar values. You can make them look whatever way best suits your App Store sales pitch.

Providing (Non-Creepy) Access to Your Contacts

David Barnard provides a very handy tip on how to selectively grant access to contact information without having to provide the full dump to just any old Tom, Dick or Harry who saunters along. You can find it on Stack Overflow where you can also upvote it, like we did.

Access to SF Symbol Scale Variants (in Sketch)

Ever have trouble accessing SF Symbol scale variants in Sketch? Mike Sternhas, and many others, we’re sure. If you count yourself amongst that number, Mike has a quick, three step tip on how to access them in this popular design app.

We’d Buy That (Mug)

If you still can’t quite cotton on to the awesome turbidity of regex syntax (we haven’t), Kelly Vaughn has a six line reference which contains most of what you really need to know. As she says “coming soon to a mug near you”. We’d buy one.

Have 21 Spare Minutes (for Another Tutorial)?

We think you can never have enough sharp, focused tutorials, and 21 Minutes to Developing a Todo List iOS App by Masa fits that category perfectly. We can remember a time when it took way longer than 21 minutes just to get started building an iOS app, and now you can do the whole thing in just that same amount of time.

Awesome RubyMotion (Example Apps, Libraries etc.)

Along the same lines, how about a ton more “example apps, libraries, tools, frameworks, software and resources”. That’s what you’ll get with Awesome RubyMotion. Amongst a bunch of little treasures, we liked in particular the examples of Hybrid apps which run on both iOS and Android. There’s something for everybody.

Thanks to all those who provided these great tips and…

That’s a Wrap!

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Until next time…never try to power through what seems like ‘just a cold’. See you back here soon, wndxlori.

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