I am planning to build a BOOK APP (with text, images, animation, sound etc) for iPad. I started learning Obj-C But I came to know about frameworks like Corona & Cocos2D and Corona boasts to be promising for my scenario. I have no working experience with any of these but am willing to learn. Which one is better to start with for building a multi-media book app? XCode & Obj-C OR Corona OR Cocos2D and how would would be the learning curve?
I can't speak for Corona, but Cocos2D is just an Obj-C library, so you'll still have to know a bit of Obj-C to get it going.
That said, I started with just Objective-C, then found Cocos2D which greatly improved my development speed, as all the groundwork is already implemented. Cocos2D has a much more managable learning curve than doing it all from scratch, and there are a number of great resources available (cocos2d forums, this blog, etc).
A quick Google search showed me that Corona has costs associated with it for distribution - cocos2d does not.
I'd have to say Corona SDK is perfect for making a book app as you described. The basis for this claim is that there have been iPad eBooks created using Corona which have made the top charts on the app store (See: http://blog.anscamobile.com/2010/11/rabbit-and-turtle-race-to-1-in-app-store-ebooks/ for a quick example).
Also, Chronicle Books (San Francisco based book publisher) has used Corona SDK to produce an eBook for the Nook platform:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/animal-show-chronicle-books/1100618669
And several others I can't think of off the top of my head.
The reason why Corona is great is because books are about getting images, text, and interactivity on the screen, and with Corona, you can do each one of those things in just a few lines of code or less!
Also, with the full-power of OpenGL, you have near limitless possibilities when it comes to adding as much--or as little--interactivity to your book as you want. With Corona, you really do get to focus on the logic behind your book app, rather than all the technical details which are handled transparently for you in the background.
For more information on eBook and Corona, visit this page:
http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/switch/e-book-developers/
Related
I would like to do some fairly simple audio programming on OS X (using Lion and Xcode 4.3) -- synthesizing tones with given frequencies, mainly. Trouble is, Apple's documentation on the subject is way too high-level for my current knowledge of the subject. I've searched for weeks now for something that will get me started, to no avail.
Does anyone know of some Core Audio basic tutorial, or even some sample code, that will help me do fairly simple Core Audio tasks so that I can progress to understanding the Apple documentation?
I would suggest the book Learning Core Audio There is also sample code from the book at that site.
If you are looking to synthesize audio fairly easy, you are going to want to use a 3rd party library. Two possible solutions are FMOD and SuperCollider.
The pros and cons between the two are really that supercollider runs as a server that you can connect from app as a client and FMOD is compiled into an app and uses core audio to synthesize the sound. FMOD is clearly the choice if you are planning on distributing this app. SuperCollider also has it's own language that you'd have to learn the basics of to start tailoring your sounds synthesis. Here are some links:
FMOD:
FMOD Downloads (Comes with a bunch of sample code)
Super Collider:
SC Server Download
Sine Wave Generator Sample App
Great source of SC scripts and examples
It appears the language is the same for either device ios or mac os on a mbp, but if I learn Objective-C in a tutorial, won't I also need to learn cocoa or cocoa touch to program effectively?
I'm not sure how to start on my path of learning to program an ios device. I know I need to learn objective-c and that appears to work on all apple products. Then do I move to cocoa touch for ipad and iphone? What comes after objective-c?
The type of project is akin to a web app but native objective-c app instead. Have ui, buttons, the app hits some back end location, returns data, I put it on that same ui. Only, as stated, use objective-c and whatever framework and library to do it (that's my dilemma. I dont know what to do next after objective-c).
thanks.
Cocoa and Objective-c go hand in hand. For getting started, I would suggest going over some old WWDC footage and following some of the examples there.
As far as Cocoa and Cocoa touch are concerned, they are very similar in many aspects, same name conventions, similar structure, etc. Learn one, and you can easily pick up the other.
#craig adds:
I would further this answer by also mentioning that Objective-C is a programming language, while Cocoa/Cocoa Touch are collections of frameworks that are provided by Apple, and used by developers to add functionality to their programs. (Which are written in Objective-C.) The Cocoa frameworks contain various UI components like buttons, table views, sliders, etc. in addition to various fundamental classes like NSString and other text- and graphics-based APIs
I started my learning by watching thenewboston's xcode tutorials:
you can begin with this one
Good luck :)
I prefer books for some strange reason and I found that the Apress series of IOS development is really good. The book goes through developing iPhone and iPad apps using all kinds of Cocoa libraries. There's a lot of good books out there on the subject; I would go find one that looks like it would suit your needs.
Now that Apple is going to release the Mac App Store there is bound to be lots of games. I'm curious, in your opinion, what is a good Mac 2D game engine to use for game development that has an objective-c interface?
Thanks
Cocos2D which I understand is popular for the iPhone also now has Mac support.
Disclaimer: I haven't tried it.
Currently the most widely popular is Cocos2D, although I would suggest to go with either Kobold2D (free) or KoboldTouch (subscription, in active development).
You can find some information about Cocos2D here:
http://macoun.de/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/6GS10.zip
Those are the materials from this year's Macoun' session on Cocos2D. It has some slides (german only, sorry) as well as some links and the sources. The slides have some examples. Might help to get you startet.
Cheers,
Marcus
"Love" is an epic game engine http://love2d.org/
Although it's not objective-c (it's lua)
At the time of writing i haven't tried it yet.
I'm a Java guy who is familiar with Swing programming and recently just started out with iPhone programming. Boy the learning curve was steep and now I would like to start Cocoa development for desktop apps.
I've been reading on articles and considering buying few cocoa book to advance my learning, still I feel I don't fully get it yet. I started about 3 months back and pretty comfortable with XCode and Objective-C but developing cocoa for desktop apps looks like a different game from iPhone development.
My questions are:
Suitable book to pick up and learn from.
What blogs I should follow?
Any code example I should look at to learn from.
I've been looking at Adium src and considering buying Cocoa Programming 3rd but the book looks like bunch of stuff I already kinda know.
Suitable book to pick up and learn from.
Aaron Hillegass - Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
What blogs I should follow?
Scott Stevenson
Wil Shipley
Cocoa is my girlfriend
Any code example I should look at to learn from.
Apple's Currency Converter tutorial
Apple's Currency Converter tutorial with cocoa bindings
EDIT: There is already a comprehensive list here on SO:
Good ways to Learn Cocoa?
Our CocoaHeads group has a really large list of resources:
http://cocoaheads.byu.edu/resources
If you're looking for books, check out: http://cocoaheads.byu.edu/resources/book
Or blogs: http://cocoaheads.byu.edu/resources/blog
Or tutorials: http://cocoaheads.byu.edu/resources/tutorial
Or sample code: http://cocoaheads.byu.edu/resources/sample-code
etc
Greetings, I'm currently learning Cocoa and Objective-C. I've run through "all" the tutorials and I'm fairly comfortable with the ObjC language. What I'm looking for now is to learn Cocoa idioms and see real code used in nice-looking Cocoa apps.
It seems like serious apps (iTunes, etc.) don't just drop in the IB elements. They do a lot more with code to tweak them to look good. (Example: the iTunes playlist drawer. How does one go about getting that styling?)
Here are some examples of nice UI's that are open source that I've found:
Smultron (current home, open-source fork)
Transmission
Vienna
Gitnub
Any other suggestions on Open-Source apps that have great Cocoa user interfaces?
You might want to look at BWToolkit, by Brandon Walkin. It's pretty awesome, containing an elegant collection of UI elements and other objects. The source code is provided so you can see how custom controls and views were created.
Brandon even provides some walkthrough movies, such as "Creating an iCal interface in 3 minutes."
A few other open source apps to dig into are Camino, Colloquy for both Mac and iPhone, Adium, and Quicksilver (lots of UI customization).