Alex Gibson, Author at Apptillery

The Hidden Gem of AVFoundation

Ever wonder how to know the exact frame of an image in a UIImageView that is using aspect fit content mode? Ever wonder how to know the position of objects inside of a photos position across ALL device sizes. Behold the power of AVMakeRect. I have used this function for so many things so I...

Written by Alex Gibson, on July 2, 2018

View Tutorial

Persisting Data with Swift 4 and Codable

Posted in: iOS, Swift

Swift has changed a lot and if you are like me sometimes it is good and sometimes it seems like a lot of work. Well Swift 4 may bring some headaches but it also brings me great joy with the Codable Protocol. Now persisting data is so easy. If you ever made your classes conform...

Written by Alex Gibson, on June 6, 2017

View Tutorial

Fun With CAEmitterLayer

Posted in: iOS, Swift

The power of the CALayer class is amazing. Recently I was looking at adding some stars to a press of a UIButton. I realized quickly how easy it was to do. Download the starter project and let’s get this done. Open up the ViewController file and in the function buttonDidPressDown we are going to...

Written by Alex Gibson, on May 11, 2017

View Tutorial

Drag Down to Dismiss in Swift

Posted in: Development, iOS, Swift

Drag Down to Dismiss in Swift Users have become accustomed to certain actions inside of apps and one of those actions is the ability to dismiss a view by dragging it down. Whether the user learned this from Facebook or Twitter to keep your app fluid you may want to implement this on your detail views....

Written by Alex Gibson, on April 27, 2017

View Tutorial

Create a Draggable UIView

Posted in: Development, iOS, Swift

If you have ever wanted to have a draggable UIView you know that it takes up a lot of code in a UIViewController. In this tutorial we are going to work on creating a draggable UIView that handles a lot of the work so we can keep our controller small and lean. We could do...

Written by Alex Gibson, on April 15, 2017

View Tutorial

Adding a React Native Camera Component to a Native iOS App

Posted in: Development, React Native, Swift

React Native is becoming widely popular. The premise that you can write one language and deploy to iOS and Android with a lot of reuse is very appealing. I decided I would test React Native in an existing iOS application so that I could stay in my natural habitat but use the benefits of React...

Written by Alex Gibson, on April 14, 2017

View Tutorial

The Basic Setup To Add React Native to an Existing iOS Project

Posted in: Development, iOS, React Native, Swift

Setting up an iOS Project to add React Native can be a pain. The documentation seems limited as cocoapods is the preferred method of installation but the pod file has to point to the javascript directory. This was not intuitive for me at first. This tutorial is how to quickly get up and running with React Native...

Written by Alex Gibson, on April 13, 2017

View Tutorial

Subtly Springy UITabbarController in Swift

Posted in: Development, iOS, Swift, Uncategorized

Great apps have two things in common. They have a great story and they do not feel stiff. You can survive a while with a great story and of the two it is most important but apps with great stories eventually have to be playful with the users. Users are also becoming better judges of design....

Written by Alex Gibson, on April 3, 2017

View Tutorial

Get Ready for UIViewController Animated Transitions

Posted in: Development, iOS, Swift

You are Ready for UIViewController Animated Transitions I remember when I first started developing and paying attention to the detail in apps how much I wanted to be able to pull off smooth animations between view controllers. Since iOS 7 that is getting easier and easier. If you know how to use the basic UIView...

Written by Alex Gibson, on March 31, 2017

View Tutorial

Zoomable UIScrollView

Posted in: Development, iOS, Swift

Zoomable UIScrollView Ever wondered how to easily create a view that allows a user to zoom in on an image or text. I am sure you have as this is a common expectation from users. We will walk through how to implement this in less than 5 minutes and approximately 5 lines of code....

Written by Alex Gibson, on March 30, 2017

View Tutorial