pashernate postings

UIProgressHUD – A safe alternative

As posted previously, although it looks nice, putting a UIProgressHUD into your App will cause it to be rejected by Apple, however there is a much better alternative which I was introduced to recently.

This is the Activity Indicator from the WordPress iPhone Application, it's freely available (however there is a caveat to using it) and it works superbly well, simply download the code and nib that are linked in this post and insert them into your project.

LoadingView.h

LoadingView.m

WPActivityIndicator.xib

RoundedRectBlack.png

Then call it by using;

[[LoadingView sharedActivityIndicator] show];
    // your code here
[[LoadingView sharedActivityIndicator] hide]; 

This provides a fine replacement for the UIProgressHUD I admire.

An App for Developers

I don't do App Reviews but this one is worthy of a mention for fellow iPhone and iPad developers, as one of the more frustrating elements of the App Store has to be the lack of information associated with your App(s) in terms of number of downloads/sales and it's ranking in each country.

Yesterday, thanks to a fellow iPhone developer via Twitter, I found an App that goes a long way to giving you this information.

PositionApp by usTwo will allow you to select and favourite your own (or any other) App and review its sales positions in each country over a period of days, weeks or months (as shown in the screenshot below).

PositionApp is very nicely done and available from iTunes

Apple scanning submitted Apps for Private API’s

My previous post regarding taking a chance on submitting an iPhone Application that uses undocumented APIs seems to have turned to high risk or possibly even 'DO NOT USE'.

News has been leaking in the last few weeks that Apple now have the means (possibly via some form of automated scanning software) to check for the use of Private APIs within code during the review process and some developers are reporting that their recently updated Applications are now being rejected on these grounds.

It's now likely that my next iPhone application will no longer use the undocumented UIProgressHUD and i'll turn to the MBProgressHUD implementation instead to get what i'm after.

It's a real shame, some of the Private APIs are really nice to use and I for one would like to take advantage of them. I don't see why Apple can't just make them available through the SDK. As I touched on in one of my previous post, the UIProgressHUD is really nicely implemented and it's already used by Apple's own in built applications, so why should they be any different in looks and appearance to user submitted Applications? If Apple's policy is to have a standard look and feel for iPhone Apps then the use of some of these Private APIs is required i'd have thought?