User Interfaces and OF and iOS

extend
#1

Hello,
I’m a bit despaired, mates.
If I’m totally okay with C++ (totally means, very comfortable, still improving my coding skill etc), if I LOVE (!) OpenFrameworks, I’m always struggling with the UIKit side of things.

If we can use the powerful ofxUI by Reza, if there are a bunch of possibilities using pure C++ & OF to make our own controls etc, we VERY often hit the wall of iOS UIKit / ObjectiveC when you want to:

  • share content easily using twitter, facebook & other SDKs (and ShareKit of course)
  • share audio with soundcloud

By wall, I don’t mean it is impossible.
I just mean, mixing all with OF is often … a pain.

I know some friends who forgot about the iOS SDK Side of things.
Some others made their own way using … only iOS SDK.

In my case, I don’t know what would be the most valuable today.

All my audio, visuals process, the core of my apps using OF is very comfortable and efficient.
So, leaving OF world would be hard for me.
I didn’t explore Cinder. I don’t know how I could deal with all my pains with Cinder too.
I also didn’t explore other wrappers to iOS developement (some exists in … almost all language fields… an AS3 one, VEGAS, seems a very very good alternative, because we can also include native extension in C, C++ etc)

So I wanted to share those thoughts with you.
Probably in order to have some leads, some debates with all of you.

Feel free to give me your opinions, way, tips here.
I hope we could discuss :slight_smile:

So, because I’m meditating a bit

#2

Julien, the issues with UIKit are non-openFrameworks specific. UIKit can be tough to get working and it takes a while to learn. I still run into issues on occasion. I recommend going through some UIKit tutorials to familiarize yourself a bit more. You can use pure obj-c to learn more about UIKit if it’s easier for you. Whether you use OF, cinder or anything other framework, you’ll have the same issues really.

#3

Hey Seth,
yes I’m sure about the fact if the target is iOS stuff, related to sharing stuff with soundcloud, flickr, twitter or more other services, we HAVE to deal with it. Especially with Cinder, which can be considered as

I’m better when I’m trying to use pure iOS SDK stuff and not mixing it with OF.

Especially, I have many questions about the best practices around using a tab bar, for instance, with OF.
Indeed, I like to build tab bar using Interface Builder. So, I’m building a new UI, composed only by a tabbar, but I have to deal with resizing/moving it at the right place in order to make it use a screen place not use by OF stuff in order to keep OF handling the touch events etc.
That particular things is ugly and, even if I have made my own templates (which need to be improved…), it is a pain and a kind of rock on the road.

As soon as I’d have something readable, I’ll share it here.
Maybe some little design patterns examples would be cool for all our community :slight_smile:

In the same field/topic, I guess I’d DREAM about using OF inside an UIView of Objective C … maybe it doesn’t make sense, but behind that idea, I mean, I could size & resize it easier, make UI design easier etc :slight_smile: