Anyway, this post is intended to answer some questions about Notified.

Q: What’s taking so long?!
A: I’m not a full time developer, I have an active social life, and I’m also studying, this is a side project I work on when I’m not too tired to.

Q: Why don’t you release what you have?
A: We won’t release an incomplete product, and releasing the icon version first, and then the MS Extension would result in pissed of people complaining about paying for the MS Extension when they already paid for the icon version.

Q: Wait, wasn’t the icon version supposed to be free?
A: It was, but with all the work Daniel and I put into it, we decided it’d be fair to charge for it.

Q: So, what are the prices gonna be?
A: It’s gonna be 99c for the icon version, and 2.99 USD for the MS extension. It’s a really affordable price for a great feature.

Q: What does the MS version have that the icon doesn’t?
A: It includes everything the icon version includes, plus the feature that you can call the window wherever you are, in a game, in safari, etc, via Activator.

Q: The screenshot says iPod, but it’s in an iPhone, are you trying to fool us? *suspicious look*
A: The screenshot was taken live from my development iPod, but was put over a screenshot of the iPhone simulator because it looks better that way. I’m sorry, but there’s no iPod simulator.

Q: What does this mean, regarding the release date?
A: It means that we are really close. We’re aiming for it to be ready with iOS4, but there are still some 4.0 bugs left to fix.

Q: It took you too long! I hate you!
A: Patience is virtue. And that’s not a question…

Q: I’ve always wanted this feature, how can I pay you?!
A: Well, it would make Daniel and I happy if you bought the app when it’s released.

• We are gonna store a variable in the user defaults to store the locked orientation, or the lack of lock.
• Check the lock when the view controller wants to rotate.

First, on first run, we need to store the variable on the defaults, so on the app delegate, we’ll do this:

We are storing -1 because that’s gonna mean “unlocked”

Now, to lock the orientation, when the view controller that’s gonna lock it is in the orientation we want to lock, we’ll do this:

Now, on the view controllers we want to lock, we’ll override this selector like this:

What that selector returns is ture for the supported orientations, so the first thing we’ll do is to check that interfaceOrientation is not upside down. Then, if orientation is -1, which means unlocked, return true, because we want it to rotate. And finally, if orientation is not -1, we’ll compare it to interfaceOrientation to allow it to be only in the locked orientation.

Aditionally, you can store orientation in an ivar, to avoid so many calls to the user defaults, but for the sake of it making sense, I didn’t do it here.

The idea is this: Instead of making changes to your DataSource and just telling the table to reload the data, you tell the table to animate the changes in certain sections/rows.

So, how do you do this?

First, open UITableView.h, and scroll to this:

For now we’ll ignore the first two selectors.

Now let’s take a look at the rest.

If you try to call it just like that, it will probably crash. This is because the table expects the data to have changed accordingly, so this are the steps to follow to animate changes:

1. Choose which cells/sections you want to update. This is usually done by user’s interaction, like when they swipe on a cell and click “Delete”.
2. Update the data on your Data Source. Be very careful with this, because when you delete cells/sections, if the new cell/section count doesn’t match the old one, plus/minus the added/deleted rows, it will make your app crash. You might have to look for special cases where sections might merge.
3. Tell the tableView to insert/delete the sections/rows you want to.
4. ???
5. Profit!

It’s that simple!

Now let’s take a look at those two first selectors.

Say you have a complex case, in which you make changes to your data source, and then want to add some cells, and delete some sections. If you call them just like that, it will crash, so we use the begin and end updates selectors.

What these two do, is that, all changes made after beginUpdates is called, will be saved, and won’t be applied until you call endUpdates, so you can remove sections and rows at the same time, something impossible without this technique.

Anyway, I hope this was clear enough, and please use it, it makes your application look way better, and it’s very simple.

Here are some small but useful additions to the UIColor class in UIKit.

This is what it does:

• Adds a method to get a color from a Hex string (with either this #FFFFFF or this FFFFFF format).
• Adds a method to get a color from an Hex string with custom alpha value.
• Adds a method to get a color from a selector string.

Here’s the download:

File: UIColor Additions (1.95KB) added: 19/03/2010

Turns out, you can edit the “Slide to Unlock” and “Slide to Answer” strings easily, but I didn’t find a way to get rid of the “Slide to view” that shows when a push notification arrives.

So I made this small Mobile Substrate extension that just doesn’t create that label.

It’s really small and doesn’t allocate any extra objects. It even avoids the OS to allocate one.

To install, just download the dylib and put it in /Library/MobileSubstrate/DynamicLibraries/ and set permissions to 755.

The source code is also available, it was made with Skylar’s template. And you’ll need the Springboard and mobile substrate headers to compile it.

Downloads:

File: NoSlideText.dylib (15.17KB) added: 15/03/2010

File: NoSlideText Source (18.33KB) added: 15/03/2010

If you are a member of M*, click here.

Notified-Notifications the way Apple should have made them.

This is what the update includes:

• Greatly improved theming system: Themes are now stored in a different folder and you can preview and apply them on the app itself. For more about themes, go here.
• Bug report mail form inside the app.
• Some extra settings.
• Bugfixes

What was left out:

• Podcasts, Audiobooks and Genres were left out until the next version. The reason: adding them with the current system would be painful, and so the menu system  is going through a rewrite to be a lot more flexible and faster.

Enjoy!

With this team I’ll be working on MS Extensions, mainly, right now I’m working on SnowCover 1.2, and another couple of interesting projects.

Our website is currently in the works, but you can follow us on twitter.

The members of the EyeDevs are:

• GiLo – Dev.
• Me – Dev.
• Elias – Graphics
• Dew – Graphics

A big thank you to all of you who did buy the app, and for those who didn’t, consider doing it if you like it! We’re not a big company (we’re not a company at all!), and it would encourage us to bring you updates and more cool apps (Our apps are only getting better!).

Either way, enjoy it!