ptg ptg Praise for Developing Hybrid Applications for the iPhone “For those not ready to tackle the complexities of Objective-C, this is a great way to get started building iPhone apps. If you know the basics of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, you’ll be building apps in no time.” —August Trometer, Owner of FoggyNoggin Software, www.foggynoggin.com “Lee S. Barney takes the complexities of iPhone application creation and utilizes simple and often witty examples and language to make this book an enjoyable and useful read. It is not a simple how-to book, but if you have some web programming background and an idea, this book can provide you with the foundation for well-made, maintain- able, and useable applications for the iPhone.” —William Dalton “This is an outstanding book! If you are interested in building applications for the iPhone, this is the book for you. Lee S. Barney makes it simple and easy to understand. He has you creating a custom application from the very first chapter.Then, he brings you up the learning curve until you’re building applications with advanced iPhone features, such as the accelerometer, GPS, and embedded maps.This is an extremely well-written and easy-to-follow book.” —Joey Skinner, CEO and President, Rodeo Software “Lee S. Barney employs his solid background in JavaScript and Xcode to demonstrate useful techniques for building hybrid iPhone applications. I appreciate his candor as he shares some of the pitfalls that might trap newcomers, which then supports the direction for his solution. If you have a strong background in Javascript and are looking to break into iPhone application development, this book would make for a good segue.” —A. Scott Mikolaitis From the Library of Wow! eBook ptg This page intentionally left blank From the Library of Wow! eBook ptg Developing Hybrid Applications for the iPhone From the Library of Wow! eBook ptg This page intentionally left blank From the Library of Wow! eBook ptg Developing Hybrid Applications for the iPhone Using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to Build Dynamic Apps for the iPhone Lee S. Barney Upper Saddle River, NJ • Boston • Indianapolis • San Francisco New York • To r o n t o • Montreal • London • Munich • Paris • Madrid Cape Town • Sydney • To k y o • Singapore • Mexico City From the Library of Wow! eBook ptg Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and the publish- er was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed with initial capital letters or in all capitals. The author and publisher have taken care in the preparation of this book, but make no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assume no responsibility for errors or omis- sions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of the use of the information or programs contained herein. The publisher offers excellent discounts on this book when ordered in quantity for bulk pur- chases or special sales, which may include electronic versions and/or custom covers and content particular to your business, training goals, marketing focus, and branding interests. For more information, please contact: U.S. Corporate and Government Sales (800) 382-3419 corpsales@pearsontechgroup.com For sales outside the United States, please contact: International Sales international@pearson.com Visit us on the Web: informit.com/aw Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Barney, Lee. Developing hybrid applications for the iPhone : using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build dynamic apps for the iPhone / Lee S. Barney. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-321-60416-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. iPhone (Smartphone) Programming. 2. Application software Development. 3. Cross-platform software development. I. Title. TK6570.M6B37 2009 621.3845'6 dc22 2009019162 Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected by copyright, and permission must be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited repro- duction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any means, elec- tronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. For information regarding permis- sions, write to: Pearson Education, Inc. Rights and Contracts Department 501 Boylston Street, Suite 900 Boston, MA 02116 Fax (617) 671-3447 ISBN-13: 978-0-321-60416-3 ISBN-10: 0-321-60416-4 Text printed in the U n i t e d Sta t e s on r e c y cled p a p er a t R . R . Do n n e l ley in C r awfor d s v i lle, Indiana. First printing June 2009 Editor-in-Chief Karen Gettman Acquisitions Editor Chuck Toporek Development Editor Sheri Cain Managing Editor Kristy Hart Project Editor Jovana San Nicolas-Shirley Copy Editor Deadline Driven Publishing Indexer Erika Millen Proofreader Kathy Ruiz Technical Reviewers August Trometer Randall Tamura Publishing Coordinator Romny French Cover Designer Gary Adair Compositor Jake McFarland From the Library of Wow! eBook ptg ❖ This book is dedicated to my wonderful wife Joan and our five boys who have put up with me being too busy while this book was being created. Eternity isn’t long enough to be with you. ❖ From the Library of Wow! eBook ptg This page intentionally left blank From the Library of Wow! eBook ptg Table of Contents Preface xiii 1 Developing with Dashcode and Xcode 1 Section 1: Using Dashcode and the Custom QuickConnect Template 1 Section 2: Using Xcode and the Custom QuickConnect Template 4 Section 3: Using Xcode and the Custom PhoneGap Template 9 Section 4: Introduction to Basic Objective-C 11 Section 5: Objective-C QuickConnectiPhone Application Structure 14 Section 6: Objective-C PhoneGap Application Structure 17 Section 7: Embedding Web Content: QuickConnectiPhone 19 Section 8: Embedding Web Content: PhoneGap 23 Summary 24 2 JavaScript Modularity and iPhone Applications 25 Section 1: Modularity 25 Section 2: The QuickConnect JavaScript Framework—A Modularity Example 26 Section 3: The QuickConnectiPhone Implementation of the Modular Design 34 Section 4: Business and View Application Controller Implementations 38 Section 5: Error Application Controller Implementation 42 Section 6: Application Functionality Creation Steps 43 Summary 43 3 Creating iPhone User Interfaces 45 Section 1: Apple’s Human Interface Guide 45 Section 2: List- and Browser-Based Interfaces 48 Section 3: Nonlist-Based View Applications 51 From the Library of Wow! eBook [...]... changes, and then export the project to overwrite the files You do not have to import them again into Xcode Next, right-click the Parts group and import the files in the Parts folder Repeat this for the Images group and the Images folder, and you are almost ready to run the application Because files were added to the Resources group, Xcode needs to be told to include them in the resources used by the application... you choose For this example, you change the id of the text div to display and empty the text field.This is done using the interface entity inspector Selecting the Inspector icon in the top bar of Dashcode activates this dialog Select the red and white tab in the upper-left hand corner of the Inspector, change the ID field to read display, and then clear the Label field Add a Push button to the interface... and dropping it outside the text field The inspector now displays the information for the button instead of the text field Select the blue cube in the upper right-hand corner of the Inspector dialog.This causes the Behaviors tab to appear.This tab enables you to define JavaScript functions as handlers for any of the user interface types of events listed Notice that many of the standard JavaScript mouse... debugging tools Because most of the code for iPhone hybrid applications is similar, the creation of a template containing the common code would prevent the need to rewrite or import it each time a new project is started For a discussion of common code, see Chapter 2, “JavaScript Modularity and iPhone Applications. ” The QuickConnectiPhone download is available from http://sourceforge.net/ projects/quickconnect... creating hybrid iPhone applications. The QuickConnectFamily installer inserts this template into Dashcode Unfortunately, at the time of the writing of this book, the creators of the alternative, PhoneGap, do not provide a Dashcode template From the Library of Wow! eBook 2 Chapter 1 Developing with Dashcode and Xcode After you run the QuickConnectFamily installer and launch Dashcode, you can find the QuickConnectiPhone... application or notify the user of a piece of information The alert function in JavaScript is actually a call into the containing browser’s native code rather than something that the JavaScript engine handles This is not implemented in QuickConnectiPhone applications because the use of dialogs violates the iPhone user interface standards Apple provided For debugging, you can use the Dashcode debugger... QuickConnectiPhone in the future If you plan to create applications for iPhones and other platforms, such as Google’s Android phones, Nokia phones, Blackberries, and desktops such as Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows, you should take a look at this appendix n n n Appendix C, The PhoneGap Development Roadmap,” provides an overview of the growth of PhoneGap in the future If you plan to create applications for iPhones... intentionally left blank From the Library of Wow! eBook 1 Developing with Dashcode and Xcode When unique, exciting, hybrid iPhone applications the power andofease of use needed used together, Dashcode and Xcode provide to create Because both these tools were extended with custom templates for hybrid iPhone applications, you do not have to “roll your own” Objective-C wrapper In the first three sections,... a directory on the hard drive of your machine .The files are then From the Library of Wow! eBook 4 Chapter 1 Developing with Dashcode and Xcode Figure 1.2 The simple example application runs in the Dashcode simulator after the button is clicked stored in this new directory.They are also ready to be imported into Xcode Figure 1.3 shows the deployment screen For more information about the JavaScript files... packages for writing applications for the iPhone and iPod touch devices: QuickConnectiPhone and PhoneGap.These packages enable you to build applications that access native device features directly from JavaScript, such as vibration, GPS location information, the accelerometer, and many other things—all without writing a single line of Objective-C or Cocoa QuickConnectiPhone, downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/quickconnect, . ptg ptg Praise for Developing Hybrid Applications for the iPhone For those not ready to tackle the complexities of Objective-C, this. From the Library of Wow! eBook ptg This page intentionally left blank From the Library of Wow! eBook ptg Developing Hybrid Applications for the iPhone