Scott builds Software » iPhone for Flash programmers

iPhone icon generator

Scott — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:36:47 +0000

Tab bar Icons

Today I spent several hours pixel twiddling UITabBar icons. The iPhone UITabBar class requires icons to be in an unusual format, initially created for the Safari browser. Blogs were replete with recommendations. Use Gimp! No, use Photoshop and mess with channels! Image matte, alpha transparency, JPG, PNG, grayscale, etc. etc.

My head hurt.

I finally came across some neat utilities from my old friend ImageMagick. After some experimenting I created a script that would convert any image into a 32×32 icon. I was so happy when it finally worked! I kept getting square blobs, regardless of what I tried (gradients, multiple colors, image masks).

The script is now available. I call it Tabulicious. The page uploads an image, converts it to the iPhone format, and stores both in Amazon S3 for immediate download. Here are some hints:

Use images with a clean background, preferably white
The main character of your image should have darker outlines, and lighter colors inside.
Vector art works better than photographs.

Apple stock up 75% in 2009

Scott — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:38:35 +0000

‘Nuff said. The iPhone is kicking butt. Now imagine what these numbers will look like when Apple introduces the iPad and starts to add camera and microphone capabilities to the iPod! Hang on tight.

The Journal writes that “the iPod growth story is over, tough times are ahead.” I’m not so sure about that. The iPod touch and iPhone are full fledged computers. For $199. Several mothers I’ve talked to have purchased iPod Touches for just that purpose — to provide Apple computers to their kids for a couple hundred bucks. Apple has moved to another playing field altogether. They make the netbook, ThinkPad, and all the other Windows boxes look antiquated. The next wave of computing is in your hand, in the cloud.

I’ve been writing software on the iPhone. Objective C screams on the little processor and the local libraries and facilities are simply amazing. It blows away all the other mobile operating systems I’ve tried, and I’ve tried a bunch (Brew, J2ME, Symbian, Nokia, Blackberry).

iPhone simulator – in Flash

Scott — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:21:38 +0000

I found an iPhone simulator written in Adobe Air while Googling around yesterday. Very cool. I hope Joe continues to evolve this simulator, adding support for all the standard controls in the Cocoa Touch environment.

ObjectiveC on the iPhone: Flash, but faster?

Scott — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:15:22 +0000

A few months ago I started playing with XCode and the iPhone development environment. I plunked down the $99 fee to join Apple’s development program.

Guess what.

The very same classes we see in flash — Graphics, BitmapData, BlurFilter — are mirrored by Quartz 2D and the Foundation classes of the iPhone. Its not exactly a perfect match, but the algorithms, data structures, and graphics pipeline are quite close. That’s exciting news for hardcore Flash developers! iPhone also gives us OpenGL for some truly amazing effects on a tiny device (e.g. Koi Pond).

I’ll start posting my adventures here in moving from Flash and widgets to iPhone development. Already my iPhone 3.0 is running with a number of experiments. To me, the iPhone is just like hardcore Flash. Except its a lot faster, and potentially more lucrative.