raywenderlich.com at 360iDev 2015

This is just a quick note to let you know that we are one of the proud sponsors of 360iDev 2015, this August in Denver, CO.

360iDev is one of my favorite iOS conferences; I’ve attended many times and have always had a blast. It’s organized by John Wilker, who is a great guy and who helps me organize RWDevCon.

Unfortunately I will not be able to attend this year due to prior obligations, but the good news is 7 members of the raywenderlich.com team will be speaking at the conference!

Keep reading to find out who from the team will be speaking – and what their talks will be on.

René Cacheaux – Bringing Swift into your Objective-C Projects

René Cacheaux (Mutual Mobile): RWDevCon speaker & Swift Team member

Join René as he covers tips and tricks for introducing Swift source into Objective-C projects.

You’ll learn:

• Where in the networking-model-UI stack to begin writing Swift.
• How to maximize the benefits of using Swift without re-writing your apps.
• How to avoid some of the common pitfalls getting Swift and Objective-C working harmoniously together.

Sam Davies – Universal Layout Workshop

Sam Davies (Razeware): OS X Team Lead, Android Team Lead, Video Team member, RWDevCon speaker, iOS 8 by Tutorials

At the time of writing, there are five different iOS device sizes that run iOS. Scaling pixel-perfect designs is becoming untenable, and so techniques to provide a universal layout are becoming increasingly important.

Apple has been suggesting using Auto Layout for a few years now, and last year introduced Adaptive Layout. These two technologies work together to allow one layout to respond to the characteristics of the current device, resulting in a much more scalable solution.

In this workshop we’ll cover the basics and theory of Auto Layout, before taking a look at how Adaptive Layout fits in to the universal layout story. The workshop will be hands-on and we’ll spend a long time in interface builder.

Aaron Douglas – WordPress for iOS – Under the Hood

Aaron Douglas (Automattic): Core Data by Tutorials, iOS Team member

Core Data can be quite stabby. If you’ve ever used model versioning and dealt with migrations, you probably understand this all too well. Most developers will end up sprinkling managed object contexts in view controllers and use managed objects right in views for rendering. Writing unit tests for code using Core Data can be quite frustrating as it is non-trivial to set up the required stack of objects to do simple tasks.

We’ll walk through the process of how to set up a test Core Data stack and how to write your tests so each one won’t affect the others. Model migration testing will be covered including some insight on how to make versioning a bit less risky. You’ll also learn how to better architect your app to reduce the complexity of setting up unit tests.

Greg Heo – Switching your Brain to Swift

Greg Heo (Razeware): Swift Team Lead, Video Team Lead, RWDevCon speaker, iOS 7 by Tutorials

We’re now a year into Swift. For those coming from Objective-C who are still testing the Swift waters, what do you need to do to switch your brain over to the new Swift way of thinking? What’s new, what’s the same, and what’s completely different when programming for the same platform in a new language?

Big-picture outline:

• focus on safety
• undefined behavior
• less dynamic behavior and fuzziness; more strong typing and predictability
• a little bit on Swift/Obj-C interop and how to make the transition

This talk is geared to existing Objective-C developers who haven’t taken the full dive into Swift yet. There will still be plenty for Swift and iOS beginners too, since it’s more of a “Swift philosophy” talk than a hands-on coding tutorial.

Matthew Morey – WatchKit Notifications

Matthew Morey (MJD Interactive): WatchKit by Tutorials, OS X Team Member

Local and remote notifications enable an app that isn’t running in the foreground to inform users about new, relevant information that’s available.

iOS has had notification support since iOS 3, and its abilities have steadily increased over the years. With iOS 7, Apple added silent remote notifications support, allowing apps to wake up in the background and perform important tasks. Actionable notifications, added in iOS 8, allow users to take an action on a notification without first opening the app.

Existing iPhone apps that currently support notifications will work on the Apple Watch without any changes. WatchKit uses a default system interface to show notifications.

However, with a little work, you can build beautiful, custom Watch notifications. During this talk I’ll cover the two new types of WatchKit notifications: short look and long look notifications.

Ellen Shapiro – Localization Explained & The Power of Working Code and Designers Who Develop

Localization Explained

Ellen Shapiro (Vokal): RWDevCon speaker, iOS team member

Having an app available in multiple languages can vastly increase your potential audience. But there are many pitfalls in localization, and what’s actually happening when your app gets localized is a mystery to a lot of developers.

In this session, you’ll learn:

• How iOS localization works under the hood
• How to keep your UI looking good when you have to use “datenschutz-bestimmungen” instead of “privacy policy”.
• A brief overview of keeping your dates and times localized.
• Tools to make localization easier, both on iOS and across platforms.
• Assorted gotchas with localization – especially when working with character-based languages.

The Power of Working Code and Designers Who Develop (with Aaron Shekey)

What are the benefits of having designers who know how to code? What are the drawbacks? Learn from a designer who learned enough Objective-C to be dangerous and the developer who helped put out the fires he started.

A case study of designing and building a Best New App – and the benefits of working code.

Marin Todorov – Power Up Your Animations!

Marin Todorov (Independent): iOS Animations by Tutorials, iOS 5-7 by Tutorials, iOS Games by Tutorials, RWDevCon Speaker, Video Team member, OS X Team member

Everyone knows how to put together a simple animation for their iOS app. Most know how to scavenge StackOverflow and find the code to do something more complex they figured out they’d need.

But how about if you want awesomely fantastically beautiful animations?

This is a demo session of what you can achieve if you really know your layers and use of GitHub and 3rd party animation libraries. There won’t be any magic in this presentation – just powerful, impressive animations!