UILocalNotifications Needs to be Fixed

Posted by Chris on Apr 1, 2011 in Programming | 0 comments

Apple’s UILocalNotifications class is broken and needs some love.

If you use iSupplement or iPill Trackr you may have noticed that no matter how many items you have that need to be taken (alerted you) the badge for the apps always remains at 1. There is no built in way of tracking the badges number without the app being open. To make things worse, when you schedule a local notification you have to provide the badge number, increments DO NOT work. So if I schedule an alert for 1 pill the badge is set to 1. If another alert goes off it simply resets the badge to 1 again. There are a few hacky ways go track this information in order to get a proper badge number. Apple really needs to fix a lot of things with local notifications. As developers we are very limited by apple in what we can do and access. Most end users don’t see this (just read some comments about feature suggestions). The classes provided by apple need to be fixed so that we can create better apps. There is a lot of fixing that needs to be done but local notifications need a huge overhaul. From what I’ve read and seen iOS 5 should bring a new notification system. So we shall see if local notifications get some improvements.  Read more here...

What is Object Oriented Programming – Expanded

Posted by Chris on Sep 21, 2010 in Programming | 0 comments

This is the expansion on my previous post which you can find here. This is a broadened look at OOP as it applies to programming in general, not just Objective-C. This is an article I submitted to Helium so feel free to check out my other articles on Helium.

Object-oriented programming (generally called OOP) focuses on the use of Classes and instances of classes called Objects. The biggest advantage to OOP is code re usability. The idea is that Classes can be reused to create multiple unique instances or Objects. Each Object has access to its own unique set of members. The members can be altered within each individual Object. Every class that is created in OOP has the methods to be able to declare, modify, and extend their members or properties.  Read more here...

Object Oriented Programming

Posted by Chris on Aug 19, 2010 in Programming | 0 comments

When I first began programming, I learned the old and easy language of BASIC. BASIC was fun and not overly difficult for a novice programmer. I remember I bought a Learn to Program in BASIC CD at one of the book fairs. The CD had plenty of walk-throughs and sample code that let you create interfaces all the way to simple games. This language is known as a “procedural language” which simply means that the program follows a set procedure during execution. The language is very “English-like” and is very easy for nonprofessionals to pick up on. Unlike Object Oriented Programming, Procedural follows a set procedure with commands like GOTO, and GOSUB. By issuing a goto command you are essentially telling your program to jump to this line of code. With OOP you simply call your method with any values you wish to send and voila your method executes. The methods in OOP are similar to functions in PP. With OOP  the main focus is on well Objects. In OOP, each object is capable of receiving messages, processing data, and sending messages to other objects. Each object can be viewed as an independent ‘machine’ with a distinct role or responsibility. Whereas PP follows a structure of code OOP allows programming logic to be reused by various objects.  Read more here...