Author Archives: Administrator

iOS & Swift – Making Custom UITabBar Menu (Sort of…)

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iPhone custom slider

TOKYO (MacHouse) – For Apple, Inc., as far as iPhone apps are concerned, it’s apparent that looks are more important than features. Forget about painting the back of a fence unlike Mr. Jobs says in his biography, right? If you only use default controls that Xcode offers, chances are that your app won’t even be featured as a new comer to the 1st category of your choice.

Anyway, the other day, I visited stackoverflow as usual, looking for an interesting topic. One of them that I spotted is this one where sombody wants to use color images with UITabBarController. First, I ran a Google search for UITabBarController if I remember correctly and spotted some examples. But I’ve actually decided to go my own way. As a result, I’ve created a horizontal menu with color images at the bottom. Looking at Screenshot 1 below, it’s not that bad. Continue reading →

iOS & Swift – Making Custom Rounded-Corner Progress Bar With UIView

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iPhone custom slider

TOKYO (MacHouse) – About a week ago, I spotted a topic at stackoverflow where somebody wanted to know how to create a custom progress bar with a rectangle with rounded corners. And I thought to myself “Hmm… I wonder if I could do it simply by using a custom UIView class?” So I launched Xcode 8 and started writing code in Swift (Swift 3). And voila! I guess, it’s not that bad. (See Screenshot 1.) Continue reading →

iOS & Swift – Making Custom Slider With UIView

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iPhone custom slider

TOKYO (MacHouse) – It’s been 7 months since I started developing software in Swift. I didn’t quite like Swift at the beginning because it’s totally different from Objective-C especially in the way it defines variables without data types. Well, I have a changed heart. I love Swift.

Anyway, one thing that I don’t like about iOS is its ugly UISlider. The touch part is a big circle, and it comes with a very thin, blue, horizontal line. Yuck! It’s ugly. So I’ve decided to make my own custom slider.   Continue reading →

What’s Coming Up Next? – Tom Bluewater Introducing SimplyPods for Mac OS X

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Mac OS X software SimplyPods

TOKYO (MacHouse) – Ever since I switched to Swift last April, the way I write code has changed dramatically. These days, I use CocoaPods and include one or more libraries in my Xcode project. Ones that I often test these days are Alamofire and SwiftyJASON although none of the desktop applications that I submit to Mac App Store utilize them. Since I use both Xcode 7 and Xcode 8, I have to use different versions of those Swift libraries. In fact, I was going to use RxSwift with Xcode 8 under OS X 10.1 El Capitan when I was developing the last desktop application. But I was not able to install RxSwift 3.0 through CocoaPods. So things are messed up. We have completely different versions of Swift – 2.3 and 3.0. We have to use one Xcode version over another. We then have to consider whether or not a particular Swift library runs under a certain OS version. Oh, boy… Life is so confusing. That’s behind the idea of developing a new desktop application.

Mac App Store application SimplyPods   Mac App Store application SimplyPods

SimplyPods is a desktop application that lets you document and list Pods that you frequently use so that you can pick ones that you need from the list when you start out a new Xcode projects.   Continue reading →

What’s Coming Up Next? – Tom Bluewater Introducing TextCandy 2 for Mac OS X

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Mac OS X software TextCandy 2

TOKYO (MacHouse) – It’s been quite a while since I submitted the last Mac application to Mac App Store. Maybe, half a year or so… Well, I want to upgrade an existing desktop application called TextCandy so badly so that I can use it while I’m at work. So here comes the second installment of TextCandy, which I submitted to Mac App Store half an hour ago.

Mac App Store application TextCandy 2

Tom Bluewater
   Mac App Store application TextCandy 2

Tom Bluewater

TextCandy 2 is a status menu application that gives you quick access to a few lines (or more) of text. If you write programming code and want to get quick access to several lines of code, you will find TextCandy 2 quite useful. If you have friends to keep in close touch with, get quick access to their phone numbers and e-mail addresses with TextCandy 2. It’s easy to use. Just explore application’s status menu and select the title of a text record. And TextCandy 2 will automatically copy the corresponding lines of text into the system clipboard for you. By the way, TextCandy 2 is developed 100% in Swift.   Continue reading →