If you have more than one app for sale on the App Store, it's a good idea to cross-promote your applications. For my newer apps, I've created a second view with a handful of links to my older stuff.
Making your app open up an App Store link is a simple. Just create a button and a method that gets called when you tap the button. In said method, all you need to do is put the following line:
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=299681466&mt=8"]];
Just replace the link there with your own from iTunes and you're all set.
PRO-TIP: When you go to iTunes and choose to copy the URL, it'll start with "itunes.apple.com/Webblahblahblah". Replace the "itunes.apple.com" part with "phobos.apple.com", just like how I have it in the example above. If you leave the itunes URL bit, your app will first open Safari, which will then in turn open up the App Store. Changing the itunes part to phobos will cause the App Store to open directly and the process will be faster and look much cleaner to your users.
1/13/2009
Hide the Status Bar
Here's a quick one. If you want to get rid of the status bar at the top of the screen to make more room for your content, head into your AppDelegate.m file, find the applicationDidFinishLaunching method and simply add in this line:
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES];
Presto-chango, the status bar will magically disappear.
PRO-TIP: If you find that after you run your application that your content kind of pops up on the screen to fill in the space, leaving an empty space at the bottom, select your view in Interface Builder and go to the measurements tab. Make sure the sizing height is set to 480 and not 460.
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES];
Presto-chango, the status bar will magically disappear.
PRO-TIP: If you find that after you run your application that your content kind of pops up on the screen to fill in the space, leaving an empty space at the bottom, select your view in Interface Builder and go to the measurements tab. Make sure the sizing height is set to 480 and not 460.
AVFoundation and Audio
There are a couple different ways to play audio on the iPhone and iPod touch. There's OpenAL, Audio Queues, SystemSounds and, introduced in firmware version 2.2, AVAudioPlayer from the AVFoundation framework. AVFoundation will eventually have a whole lot more to it, including video playback and the like, but AVAudioPlayer is a good start.
The nice thing about AVAudioPlayer is that it's a piece of cake to use. The downside is that it isn't instantaneous, so you’ll get a slight pause before the sound plays. So, I’ve found that it’s great for playing alerts and things like that, but not for anything that requires immediate playback, like games or a virtual piano.
Loading a sound and playing it is simple. To load a piece of audio, use something like this:
The second and third lines are fairly common for loading files – point to the file, then assign said file to your variable. The third line, which I believe is optional for simple stuff, basically tells the view (I think) to pay attention to the sound so that you can monitor what it’s doing.
Anyway, once the file is loaded, playing (and stopping) it is simple. Those commands look like:
[myExampleSound play];
[myExampleSound stop];
Before you play the sound, you can use:
[myExampleSound prepareToPlay];
to get it ready. AVAudioPlayer will do this for you automatically when you call the play method, but you then get a tiny bit more lag. If it’s a short sample, you’ll probably be fine without it.
Aside from playing and stopping the sound, you can tweak it in a few ways. Here are two examples:
myExampleSound.volume = 0.5;
myExampleSound.numberOfLoops = 2;
Obviously, the first one sets the volume (from 0 to 1.0) and the second can be used to repeat the sound multiple times in a row.
There are a couple more things you can do with AVAudioPlayer, though I haven’t played around with more myself. For instance, it sounds like you can monitor whether or not a sound is currently playing, which can certainly be helpful.
The nice thing about AVAudioPlayer is that it's a piece of cake to use. The downside is that it isn't instantaneous, so you’ll get a slight pause before the sound plays. So, I’ve found that it’s great for playing alerts and things like that, but not for anything that requires immediate playback, like games or a virtual piano.
Loading a sound and playing it is simple. To load a piece of audio, use something like this:
AVAudioPlayer *myExampleSound;
NSString *myExamplePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"myaudiofile" ofType:@"caf"];
myExampleSound =[[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:myExamplePath] error:NULL];
myExampleSound.delegate = self;
NSString *myExamplePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"myaudiofile" ofType:@"caf"];
myExampleSound =[[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:myExamplePath] error:NULL];
myExampleSound.delegate = self;
The second and third lines are fairly common for loading files – point to the file, then assign said file to your variable. The third line, which I believe is optional for simple stuff, basically tells the view (I think) to pay attention to the sound so that you can monitor what it’s doing.
Anyway, once the file is loaded, playing (and stopping) it is simple. Those commands look like:
[myExampleSound play];
[myExampleSound stop];
Before you play the sound, you can use:
[myExampleSound prepareToPlay];
to get it ready. AVAudioPlayer will do this for you automatically when you call the play method, but you then get a tiny bit more lag. If it’s a short sample, you’ll probably be fine without it.
Aside from playing and stopping the sound, you can tweak it in a few ways. Here are two examples:
myExampleSound.volume = 0.5;
myExampleSound.numberOfLoops = 2;
Obviously, the first one sets the volume (from 0 to 1.0) and the second can be used to repeat the sound multiple times in a row.
There are a couple more things you can do with AVAudioPlayer, though I haven’t played around with more myself. For instance, it sounds like you can monitor whether or not a sound is currently playing, which can certainly be helpful.
Welcome
My name is Chris Roper and I'm an amateur iPhone developer. As of this writing, I have four applications on the App Store with my next one set to go up tomorrow (if it's approved by Apple in time) and a sixth nearly done. They aren't complicated applications by any means, but they're fun projects, good learning experiences and help to bring in a little extra cash.
Learning to program for the iPhone hasn't been easy - I majored in computer science for three years at Virginia Tech, but that was more than a decade ago. I never got into Mac programming, so my experience with Objective-C was basically nil. So while I have the fundamental knowledge for how things work, I had to start from scratch with learning most of the syntax, the development environment, single-window UI techniques and more.
My hopes are that by sharing bits of code that I've picked up, I'll be able to help others at a similar starting point get up to speed a little quicker. Please post in the comments and offer up different (or better) ways to handle things, alternative methods that could be useful in other situations and whatever else you can or want to post.
Thanks.
Learning to program for the iPhone hasn't been easy - I majored in computer science for three years at Virginia Tech, but that was more than a decade ago. I never got into Mac programming, so my experience with Objective-C was basically nil. So while I have the fundamental knowledge for how things work, I had to start from scratch with learning most of the syntax, the development environment, single-window UI techniques and more.
My hopes are that by sharing bits of code that I've picked up, I'll be able to help others at a similar starting point get up to speed a little quicker. Please post in the comments and offer up different (or better) ways to handle things, alternative methods that could be useful in other situations and whatever else you can or want to post.
Thanks.
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