I decided to get in touch and ask them this one question.

“Think back to when you started making iOS/Mac apps, if you were to give that “earlier you” who is starting out a piece of advice today, what would you tell him/her?”

See what they had to say to that below. There is a ton of good advice in these quotes so please heed them.

Make sure to share this on Twitter. Use the buttons to your left. And if you want to say thank you and have anything to add, please leave a comment at the end of the post.

• 

  Matt Gemmell

  Speaker, Founder – Instinctive Code

  There’s always room for better software. Every kind of app has been done a hundred times on iOS already, but there’s still a place for apps that are truly simpler, and better, and easier to use.

  Even in utterly saturated categories like checklists and text editors. If you think that your idea has some uniqueness, and some value, then you shouldn’t be afraid to build it and release it. If it’s something that you want, then there’s someone else out there who wants it too.

  Every app has been done a hundred times but there’s always room for better software <--Tweet this

  Follow @mattgemmell

• 

  Ray Wenderlich

  Founder RazeWare, Raywenderlich.com

  Don’t expect overnight success – keep learning and growing and making apps – each one will be better than the last!

  Don’t expect overnight success <– Tweet this

  Follow @rwenderlich

• 

  Mattt Thompson

  Creator of AFNetworking & NSHipster

  When I first started iOS, I had been a Ruby & Rails programmer for about 4 years. I definitely spent a lot of time grappling with the language syntax, and trying to get a handle on all of the system frameworks. Back then, tutorials for basic tasks were sparse, and there were almost no open source projects to speak of. I had to rely on Apple’s sample code and shear determination to get anything to work.

  But still, just the novelty of being able to create something for the iPhone was enough to make everything worth it. These days, I’m happy to say that an iOS developer starting out today has dozens of great resources and hundreds of open source libraries available at their disposal. For tutorials and sample code, I heartily recommend Ray Wenderlich’s site & NSScreencast. For anyone wanting to learn about more advanced topics, I write about obscure parts of Objective-C and Cocoa every week on NSHipster.

  As far as open source, CocoaPods is absolutely essential. Not only does CocoaPods make managing dependencies effortless, but it’s become an amazing tool for discovering new libraries. So much has changed since I first started out. It’s never been easier to get started and make amazing apps, so my advice to anyone starting out or considering iOS development is simple: go for it!

  It’s never been easier to make amazing apps, if you are considering it: go for it! <-Tweet this

  Follow @mattt

• 

  Dan Rowinski

  Mobile Editor, ReadWriteWeb

  Make sure to give design and development issues equal weight in the planning process. App developers often focus too much on what they “can” do without thinking of how it will look and how the user will interact with it when it is done.

  If you create killer functionality that is hard to use, people will not come back to your app. On the other side, if you create an awesome looking app that keeps crashing and does not do what it says it is supposed to do, users will flee. Look at Path or Instagram. Those are companies that balance design and functionality extremely well.

  Give design and development issues equal weight in the planning process <-Tweet This

  Follow @dan_rowinski

• 

  Jeremy Olson

  Founder, Tapity

  Don’t neglect the idea. We’ve all heard that the idea for an app doesn’t matter; it’s all about execution. I used to firmly believe that but then something happened. My second app, Languages, made more money in one day then my first app made in two years. What on earth? They both were well executed. Grades even won an Apple Design Award. They both were well marketed, being featured by Apple and the press. What was the difference?

  The idea.

  Grades was always limited by the small niche it served – college students who really care about their grades (a smaller niche than we would hope). Languages was much more universal. Almost anyone might be interested in a translation app that works without an internet connection. Don’t get me wrong, as this chart illustrates, niche apps can definitely make a lot of money but they have to be in niches that care so much about the app that they will pay a premium for it. Most apps, unfortunately, make the mistake of targeting a niche that would only pay 99 cents for their app, resulting in a disappointing business equation.

  Don’t target a niche that will only pay 99c for your app. <--Tweet this

  Follow @jerols

• 

  Marco Arment

  Instapaper, The Magazine

  Hire a designer <-Tweet this

  Follow @marcoarment

• 

  Peter Steinberger

  Speaker, Creator of PSPDFKit

  Don’t use Three20. Nah, seriously. Don’t lose faith, and take more risks. Back in 2009, I learned everything the hard way with writing a big social app that scraped web content. It got wildly successful and I was hooked on the platform. A few months later Apple shut it down, a few weeks before my first WWDC.

  I was really crushed and it took me quite some time until I got back to Xcode, and then some more to find the courage to quit my day-job to become a freelancer. Later on it was equally hard quitting freelance work and doing my own thing. It’s been a hell of a ride and it brought me where I am now, with a sustainable business – even though I could’ve been there faster.

  Don’t lose faith, take more risks! <-Tweet this

  Follow @steipete

• 

  Marc Edwards

  Lead Designer, Bjango

  Partnerships are vital. Find good people to work with, who complement your skill set. Respect them and learn enough about their craft to be able to talk the same language For iOS designers this means getting familiar with Xcode and the naming conventions Apple use for their UI elements. It means going to developer conferences and meet ups. We’re all part of the same team.

  Give back. The fastest way to learn is by openly sharing and discussing tips and techniques. Writing helps form solid opinions and serves as a great way to check you’re doing things the right way (if you’re not, you can be sure someone will let you know).

  Strategy is important. I love reading Asymco.com, ben-evans.com and listening to The Critical Path. It may not initially be apparent, but being well versed in where the industry is heading can give you insight into where design is heading, too. When things become more predictable, you can plan accordingly.

  Give back. The fastest way to learn is by openly sharing and discussing <- Tweet this

  Follow @marcedwards

• 

  Aaron Hillegass

  Chief Learning Officer, Big Nerd Ranch

  Being a developer involves a certain amount of smarts and confidence. In the case of beginning developers, these strengths can manifest as a flaw: Novice developers fall in love with their own ideas.

  Experienced developers, trained by years of being wrong, are much more skeptical of their hypotheses. So, if you are starting a career as a programmer, always be looking for easy ways to prove yourself wrong. I’ve even seen a bumper sticker on this topic. It read “Don’t believe everything you think.”

  Don’t fall in love with your ideas. Always look for ways to prove yourself wrong <-Tweet this

  Follow @aaronhillegass

• 

  Dave Verwer

  iOS Dev Weekly

  Don’t build an app thinking you will find an audience later, find the audience first and then build apps to meet their needs. <-Tweet this

  Follow @daveverwer

• 

  Daniel Jalkut

  Founder, Red Sweater Software, Co-Host of Core Intuition

  Always remember that the main thing separating people who succeed from people who donít is a commitment to keep trying while the others give up.

  Knowledge and cleverness are key components to achieving your goals but they pale in comparison to persistence and an unwillingness to admit defeat.

  What separates successful people from others is a commitment to keep trying <-Tweet this

  Follow @danielpunkass

• 

  Robin Raszka

  Co-Founder, Tapmates, Pttrns.com

  Don’t try to be the next Jony Ive. Focus on designing the best experience for real users.

  Never stop learning new things. Forget wireframes and especially uploading screenshots to Dribbble, instead, learn how to do your own working prototype and get it ASAP on the device and play with it.

  Focus on designing the best experience for real users <-Tweet this

  Follow @raszka

• 

  David Smith

  Founder, FeedWrangler, Host of Developing Perspective

  Make sure that you understand your own definition of what success looks like. It is a brutal marketplace if that is solely financial.

  For this to be an enjoyable living you need the enjoy the process and people involved. <-Tweet this

  Follow @_DavidSmith

• 

  Dan Counsell

  App Producer and Founder, Realmac Software

  Remember to keep things focused by removing all unnecessary elements and features. Sometimes having less features can be your biggest competitive advantage <- Tweet this.

  Follow @dancounsell

• 

  Craig Hockenberry

  Twitterific and Iconfactory

  When I first started developing software for the Mac, I got lucky. From day one, I worked with some very talented designers: Jeffrey Zeldman and the Iconfactory. Jeffrey and I have parted ways, but I still can’t imagine making a product without the help of my colleagues at the Iconfactory. It’s imperative to have a partner as you develop a product.

  And take this notion of partnerships a bit further: don’t be afraid to meet people. Work to overcome your introversion (we all have it!) and make time to develop relationships with your fellow designers and developers. There’s a lot to be learned from other people in our industry and you’re missing out if you’re just on the receiving end of the dialog. To help start that conversation, figure out what you know that others need to know.

  Don’t be afraid to meet new people. Work to overcome your introversion.<-Tweet this

  Follow @chockenberry

• 

  Rene Ritchie

  iMore, @MobileNations

  Consider the design as much as the code, and the marketing as much as the product. Development, design, and marketing are all distinct, equally important skill sets needed to ensure success. If you can’t code, hire the best coder you can. Same for design. Same for marketing.

  Anyone can get lucky, but the smarter you are, the luckier you’ll be.

  Development, design, and marketing are all distinct, equally important skill sets needed to ensure success <-Tweet this

  Follow @reneritchie

Picture Credits:
Rene Ritchie by iMore |
Ray Wenderlich By Cocoa Conf | Matt Gemmell by adelcambre| Marco Arment by webstock06 | Marc Edwards by Melbourne Cocoaheads | Aaron Hillegass by Duncan Davidson | Daniel Jalkut by Massivev

Want to build the next BIG app? Have a brilliant idea that is a sure-fire success?

You can build it and see if the come. Or you can go the smart route and validate it first.

In a world with 700,000 apps in the Apple App Store and over 850,000 apps in Google Play, we no longer live in a world where if “you build it, they will come.” It’s more “if you build it and it’s awesome, then they MIGHT come.”

Instead of spending the time, money, and energy in building an app, you can take these four simple steps to first validate that there’s actually a market for your app idea.

Are people searching for your app?

A dead simple way to validate your idea is to see if people are actually searching for your app. Using the Google Keyword tool, you can discover the number of searches your idea generates.

When using this tool, you want to make sure you have the keyword match set to “exact”. This will show you the number of searches there are for your exact keyword phrase.

As an example, before I built Breakup Meter, I used the Google Keyword tool to see how many searches there were for “love meter”. Note how the broad and phrase match return a significantly higher number of searches. This will skew your data as the broad and phrase match settings will include keywords such as “love meter game” or “love calculator”.

However, using the “exact” match type i was able to see that there were 74,000 searches a month for “love meter” and the competition for the term was low. That was a good signal to me that there was a definite market for the app.

Along with my background with SEO, I was sure that I could rank for the keyword.

Are they buying or using similar apps?

For me, it’s not if they are using similar apps; it’s if they are buying similar apps? However, if you’re going for scale maybe it’s using. The point is all the same.

AppAnnie is a great service to look at the top charts of different app stores. What you want to do is make sure that similar apps to the one you are building are within those top charts. I don’t mean exactly the same, but something similar.

For example, CarTunes is an amazing and slick music player app that is completely gesture based. I’ve personally replaced Apple’s default music player with this app.

I had a chance to interview Ryan Oksenhorn, developer of CarTunes, on my podcast and what I admire about him is that he went after a huge market and put his own spin on it.

Who doesn’t listen to music on their iPhone? In addition, he solved the one problem that most people have while listening to music in their car – the inability to look at the actual music player.

CarTunes has over 3.5 million downloads by solving one problem in a huge market. Listen to the full interview here.

I also got a chance to interview the very own Tope Abayomi, but more on that later.

Will people actually download it?

If after the first two steps, you’re still unsure of your app’s success then I’d recommend spending $100 to really test the market.

This last step you’ll be testing whether or not your audience will exchange an email address to be notified when the app is live. If they’re not willing to exchange an email address they’re likely not going to fork over a couple of dollars for the app.

Step 1 – Build a Buyer Persona

Think about who will download your app. Be as specific as possible. For my Breakup Meter app here is one of my buyer personas.

image credit: Wood Street

Name: Brad
Age: 19
Income: Mom and dad
Description: Brad is in college and loves entertainment photo apps such as FatBooth and UglyMeter. He doesn’t mind spending a couple of dollars for an app in exchange for a few good laughs with friends at a party.
How to reach buyer: Brad spends most of his free time on Facebook. He reads the college paper and ESPN.

After going through this exercise I know exactly what I have to do to reach all the Brads of the world.

- Reach out to college papers about the app
- Create a Facebook page for the app
- Run ads on Facebook and/or ESPN

Create 3 buyer personas for your app. When you’re thinking about each buyer try to be as specific as possible. What do they read, what other apps do they have on their phone and what type of messaging resonates with them.

Step 2 – Build a Landing Page

Now that you have the buyer personas and have an idea of what other apps your potential buyers are using, you can look at the description of those apps to get a sense of the style of messaging that resonates with your audience.

Next step then is to build a landing page promoting your app. You can use a service like Unbounce or buy a landing page through ThemeForest.

You’ll also want to create a few screen shots of the app so potential buyers think its a real app. If you’re not a designer, use one of the iPhone app design templates on App Design Vault.

Then sign up for an email service provider like Mailchimp so you can start generating leads for your app.

What we’re trying to achieve here is to see if there’s an audience for your app. Are they willing to exchange an email address to be notified when the app is released.

Step 3 – Buy Ads

The next and final step is to run a few ads for your app. If you have a web hosting service such as BlueHost, take look at your control panel. They are always giving away free coupons to advertise on Facebook and Google Adwords. I’d recommend using these coupons for your ads.

Go back to your buyer persona and figure out the best place to run an ad. I find that Facebook has the best targeting features, but every app is different.

For my app, my target audience is males age 16-25 who have an iPhone. Using Facebook’s targeting I was able to target my ads specifically for this audience.

You’re also able to cap the dollar amount you’d like to spend each day on the ad. If you’re using a coupon, then you’ll likely only have $50 to spend, so I’d recommend capping your daily budget at $10 a day.

Create a Poll in a Forum

This tip comes from the man himself, Tope Abayomi. I had him on my podcast, Mobile App Chat, where entrepreneurs in the mobile space share their success stories and he told me a story of how he validated App Design Vault.

He went to a popular iPhone developers forum and created a poll. He asked the members what is the biggest challenge you have when developing apps?

A) Coding
B) Designing
C) Marketing
D) which Tope doesn’t remember

Over 70% of the respondents selected “Designing”. Boom!

App Design Vault was born.

The story of how Tope built App Design Vault from the ground up is an inspirational one and definitely worth a listen. Plus, he’s such an all-around nice guy.

Conclusion

While many will tell you that the mobile space is extremely crowded, I’d argue that there is still plenty of room. However, before spending the time, money, and energy on building an app, make sure you do the due diligence to validate your idea beforehand.

Talk to as many people as you can. Do a video chat rather than an audio one, so you can see the person’s reaction. Do everything you can to make sure you give yourself the best chance at succeeding.

Believe me I’ve seen my share of app failures.

What are some creative ways you’ve validated your app idea? Do you think validation is worth all the trouble? Share your thoughts in the comments.

This is a guest post by Steve P. Young, Founder of Pixel Happy, a content marketing and mobile app development firm. He also hosts Mobile App Chat a podcast interviewing the top mobile entrepreneurs.

He’s been featured on Pando Daily, Website Magazine, General Assembly, Search Marketing Expo and other major publications.

Download the full size PDF here

Feel free to embed it on your site using the code below

<b>++ Click Image to Enlarge ++</b><br /><a href="http://www.appdesignvault.com/betterdeveloper/" ><img src="http://www.appdesignvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/BetterDeveloper.png" alt="How to be a better developer"></a><br />Source: <a href="http://www.appdesignvault.com/betterdeveloper/" >How to become a better developer</a>

I have read lots of “Ways to become a better developer” posts and it seems most of them were written 10 years ago. They still have a lot of wisdom so I wanted to distill what I think are the best 10 ways into this poster above so you can have it with you every time.

Here we go.

Read other people’s code

Scott Hanselmann

Read other people’s code and learn from them. You will get better in time because you tend to see how other developers approach problems.

Pair programming is the best way to improve yourself. You get to read code from another developer and see his/her thought process in real time. And vice versa. You can both challenge your point of views and both grow as developers.

Get someone to read your code

In Greek mythology, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in the water. He couldn’t resist looking at it. As developers we are prone to the same syndrome that has now been named after him, Narcissism.

When you code, it is easy to fall in love with your “artwork”. But a piece is of code is only close to perfection when someone else can read it and understand what you are on about.

Get others to read your code by doing code reviews often. You will learn a thing or two every time. Especially when you discover that method name doesn’t mean so much sense after all.

Tweetable – One way to be a better developer is to read other people’s code <- Tweet this

Fix bugs before writing new code

Joel Spolsky

I’m sure you have been there. You discover a bug and you say, “I’ll fix it later, let me just get these features out of the way”. Or you see a failing unit test but you cannot be bothered to go find out why it is failing, so you either comment out the test or hack it.

Do yourself a favour and create a habit of fixing issues early. They will only pile up and then you incur more technical debt as time goes on.

Learn a new technology

Ryan Farley

You are in a fast paced world. Your skills are perishable very similar to the risotto in your fridge. Learning new technologies as a developer will help you stay on the cutting edge and in demand.

Lots of “civilians” are learning how to code now and it isn’t a surprise because you have one of the best paid jobs on the planet right now. Never has it been cool to be a geek.

If you are an iOS developer, learn some Rails or vice versa so you know how to roll a server backend as a quick example.

Keep it simple

You can always find more elaborate ways to implement a task in programming. Some people get off of looking at how amazing their code is, and that’s okay but keep it simple, will you? This ties into the earlier point made about getting someone else to read your code.

If they can’t understand it within a few minutes then you are doing yourself (and frankly anyone that has to maintain that piece of code) a disservice.

Write a blog post about your implementation

Bill Simser

The best way to get better at anything is to teach it. If you are able to make someone else understand a concept, that means you have been able to grasp it and not just hacking or blagging away.

Write a blog post explaining how you went about the process of solving the problem at hand.

This is also a good resume BTW, if you are ever looking for contracts and you can point your potential recruiter at a series of blog posts, you have an advantage.

Thought leaders always the advantage.

Contribute to Open Source

Eran Kampf

This means to either start an open source implementation of your own or contribute to an existing one. This helps you understand how to collaborate with a bunch of developers. This is especially helpful if you do a lot of lone projects.

Learning from other like-minded developers is a plus and, come on, isn’t it cool to give back to the community?

Fix it don’t Hack it

Danny Barbol

I was speaking to a friend the other day. She is an accountant and she says it can be frustrating when she is 0.69 cents short of balancing an account. She spends hours doing accounts worth millions of dollars and at the end they don’t balance just because he switched a 0.96 cents somewhere to 0.69 cents.

As developers, we encounter the same thing often. The “one-liner” bug that kills the whole show. It is tempting to put in a hack without really researching why your code isn’t doing what is should. “Add a +5 here and there and it will be fine”, you say.

No, find out the cause and fix it or that hack will come back to bite you in the ass.

Tweetable – Be good citizen and fix that bug, don’t hack it. <- Tweet this

Increase Code Coverage by 1%

Doing Test Driven Development (TDD) can seem like a bore sometimes. Having to write lines and lines of tests before writing the code? Yeah, that’s not always fun, let’s be honest. You want to get right to the fun part.

I subscribe to the TDD mindset wholly but sometimes you just are at a point where you have tons of untested code sitting right in front of you. Maybe you inherited a crappy codebase from someone else or you dropped the ball and forgot to add those unit tests.

Don’t feel bad, and don’t cry over spilt milk. Believe it or not, lots of projects have the same issues, whether they like to admit it or not. What you have to do is add the tests one by one.

It’s like a writer/author that has writer’s block, and staring at a blank piece of paper. Productivity gurus say the best way to overcome it is to just start writing on that blank paper (or computer screen, nowadays

Don’t think about the 24,000 lines of untested code, just break it down into chunks and start adding those tests. Cover 400 lines today and another 400 lines tomorrow. You may never cover all 24,000 but 1 month down the line, you will be 8000 lines of untested code lighter.

Your codebase just got better.

Leave your desk every hour

This is one of the most important points in this post. Even though it doesn’t directly relate to programming. Stand up and have a stretch at least every hour, your body will thank you for it.

Don’t go on those marathon coding sessions where you are glued to a chair for hours on end. Even if you have one of those $900 ergonomic ones (by the way, if there was going to be an 11th tip, it would be “Get a great chair”).

You don’t want to make all that money as a developer and not be able to make use of it because you are spending it on medical bills, do you?

Tweetable – Leave your chair/desk every hour, your back will thank you for it <- Tweet this

That’s all folks, Please share this

So there you have it, 10 ways you can improve on your development skills. Don’t forget to download the poster and put it up on your wall to remind you.

And, let your fellow developers know about by tweeting it. The world will be a more peaceful place if all code-bases were maintained with these 10 steps in mind

From all the 230+ responses which I got in the last survey, it seems you want 3 main app types, an RSS newsreader/Wordpress app, Business apps and Photo gallery apps.

And the most requested for features are social sharing, database connection, ability to change themes/designs on the fly…and so much more.

I asked and you have given… Much more than I asked for. Well I can’t complain

So here are some more screenshots from the first app I decided to work on. It will be a Blog/Wordpress/RSS reader app with loads of social features.

For now, here are some features I was thinking about adding to it.

Ability to change designs on the fly

The screenshot above uses the Bizapp template, I plan to bundle a couple more templates so you can switch back and forth.

Facebook/Twitter sharing

The app will be able to connect to the embedded Facebook/Twitter accounts on the phone and allow you to share articles.

This will also pull down the twitter/Facebook streams of any user you configure in the app via JSON mod display them.

Loading an RSS feed

This will show RSS feeds from WordPress blogs or any valid XML RSS feed.

What do you think? First off I need a name. What do I call this app? Any other ideas of what will be a good fit? Please leave a comment and let me know.

When designing your app, the navigation bar is easily the UI element that stands out the most. It defines the rest of the design and that is what most users remember.

I decided to create this list of navigation bar designs for you to use in your app. They were inspired by lots of good design patterns all across the App store.

Browse and download the assets for the ones you like. You can find a sample Xcode project that implements them all at the end of the post.

Please share with your friends

Don’t hoard this, since we are all giving freely, please share this with your friends. You can do by clicking on the Twitter or Google+ share buttons on the left. I will appreciate that. Thanks.

Holborn

This set of navigation bars give your app a chalkboard effect. Great for educational apps and games.

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Pimlico

The wooden effect has been made popular by apps like iBooks. In the three navigation bars below, we show a different take on the effect. Using two different textures and the classic one we are all used to.

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Vauxhall

Colorful and vibrant. Here are three navigation bars that make your app pop.

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Hendon

The navigation bar looks like it is peeled off the screen. This gives your app much needed depth. Away with boring “flat” styles.

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Belsize

Something design patterns from Android are actually good. I hate to say but I am a fan of the segmented nav bars you see on Android.

Here is an iOS-y take on those navigation bars.

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Sloane

Here is a more minimalist take on the “peeled-off” effect on the navigation bar. Similar to Hendon above, this will also give your app depth.

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Richmond

Richmond combines a gray background with a colorful set of buttons for the UIBarButtonItem. Also, don’t miss the classy sweeping gradient on the bar.

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Camden

Camden is a gives a different take on the Android pattern similar to Belsize above. The segmented navigation bar effect is more subtle.

I like this one a lot, what do you think?

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Kensington

Last but certainly not least in the set is Kensington. The gradient on the navigation bar will make your app really stand out. It looks similar to the default iOS 6 navigation bar with a tint, but this gives your app a far from default look.

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That’s all folks!

I hope you like this. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Don’t forget to share!

Please hit the Twitter and Google+ button to the left and share this with your friends! Don’t be a hoarder.

In this post, I want to get your creative mind flowing and show you the possible ways you can revamp your app’s look and feel. I decided to take Tweet Library and show some alternative designs you can achieve with the templates from App Design Vault.

Also you get to download the Xcode project that implements the designs at the end of this post for free. Sweet, huh?

Dark Coolness

First off, I used the Podradio template to give the interface a dark look and feel. Almost like Twitterrific but with some textures.

Stitched Leather

Some of you are probably saying, Isn’t that Skeuomor….? Come on, let’s face it, there is some sexiness to leather textured interfaces.

Now while everyone is proposing to move on to “flat” design, I’m so against that. Imagine a world with the same red, green and blue buttons on all apps 2 years down the road.

This design uses the Foody template from the full gallery of templates

Ocean blue

Cool thing about having a service like App Design Vault is, you don’t have to stick with leather if you don’t like it. We cater to all tastes. Just like this minimal blue design which probably reminds you of the Twitter. app.

This uses the Biz App template.

And if you don’t want your app to look like Twitter, use our free Color Switcher app here and switch it up!.

Download the sample project

Just because we are cool like that, here is the sample Xcode project that implements all the three designs you see above.

Don’t forget to check out the full gallery of templates. If you have any questions, just leave a comment and I will be around to answer as soon as possible.

Digital magazines are now becoming popular, especially with the impending demise of print publications.

I have had some experience with publishing magazines on Apple’s newsstand platform and with over 12000 subscribers to my Newsstand magazine, Appville; I can safely say I have learned a thing or two.

Today, I decided to publish a version of the Appville magazine source code and give you some free page templates. In doing this, I hope it will help you in the journey of creating your own digital magazine.

I was inspired to release this template pack because I have been getting a lot of requests from people wanting to know how to go about publishing a Newsstand magazine. But you have to understand, it isn’t about the technology, the content of your magazine is what will decide whether it succeeds or not.

Marco Arment summed it up pretty well in his post here

“Publishing platforms will soon make it easier to get into Newsstand. But making magazine-quality content on a regular schedule, getting enough subscribers to pay when there’s tons of great online content for free, and keeping the subscribers interested after they’ve paid — those are hard, they’ll always be hard, and a lot of people are underestimating those challenges and thinking the biggest barrier is an app.” – Marco.

What you Will Get

Let me introduce what you will be getting in the download

Magazine Issue Management

The first screen you will see is a list of issues that are available in your magazine. The app uses the issue management present in the iOS NewsstandKit.

The screen was designed using one of our templates here on App Design Vault. See the Freelancer template here.

I have included two other colour schemes in the app. Orange and Blue.

Magazine Page Templates

After downloading an issue, you can then start reading by tapping on the item. The magazine uses the open source Baker Framework to display the pages. These are effectively HTML pages that are linked in a HPub format. Find out more information here.

I have included 5 page templates. See them below

The Full Page Image Template

The Contents Page Tempate

The Article With an Image Template

The Plain Article Templates.

I have included 3 plain article templates here. The main difference between them is the colour and typography. I got some inspiration from the Big Book of Font Combinations to layout the typography.

I found a mixture of iOS-Native fonts to use and here they are.

• Avenir (for the Headers)/Baskerville (for the articles)
• Futura (for the Headers)/Optima (for the articles)
• GillSans (for the Headers)/Baskerville (for the articles)

How to Use – And Download link

The code is available in Github from the link below

Available on Github

Currently, the code uses 2 sample issues uploaded to the App Design Vault site, you will need to create your own issues and upload them to your own server. The sample issues are in the /Sample-Magazine-Issue folder in the repo.

You will need to zip up the folder and then upload it.

Next, you should create a .plist file that will hold a list of all your issues. A sample .plist file is added to the XCode project and you can find under the /Supporting Files/issues.plist group. I have pasted a sample below as well.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<array>
	<dict>
		<key>Name</key>
		<string>Magazine Issue - 1</string>
		<key>Title</key>
		<string>Magazine Issue - 1</string>
		<key>Date</key>
		<date>2013-06-01T06:00:00Z</date>
		<key>Cover</key>
		<string>http://www.appdesignvault.com/appville/issues/type/issue-image.png</string>
		<key>Content</key>
		<string>http://www.appdesignvault.com/appville/issues/type/issue-data.zip</string>
	</dict>
	<dict>
		<key>Name</key>
		<string>Magazine Issue - 2</string>
		<key>Title</key>
		<string>Magazine Issue - 2</string>
		<key>Date</key>
		<date>2013-06-01T06:00:00Z</date>
		<key>Cover</key>
		<string>http://www.appdesignvault.com/appville/issues/type/issue-image.png</string>
		<key>Content</key>
		<string>http://www.appdesignvault.com/appville/issues/type/issue-data.zip</string>
	</dict>
</array>
</plist>

This file will also be uploaded to your server.

Lastly, you have to change the links in the Publisher.m file to point to this .plist file so your app knows where the issues are located.

This is a project I made with a lot of help from different sources and it is only fair I credit these sources

• How to Make a Newsstand App Tutorial Part 1 and Part 2
• Baker Framework
• iOS 5 By Tutorials eBook

The app is called SensibleShare and it is basically an app that pulls a list of popular posts from the Instagram API and displays it in a list. When you tap on a post, a detail view pops up to show you the profile of the poster with his/her recent posts on Instagram.

This app uses STV 3.1.8 Pro to access the Instagram API and the Socioville template to achieve the design.

Let’s get started.

Getting access to the Instagram API

First off, you will need an API access code from Instagram to use the API. Please register here as a developer.

After you register, you will need to create a new client app that will connect to the API. Go back to the developer portal and click on the “Manage Clients” button and follow the steps to create a new client.

The last step is to get the access token. Normally, you would have to create a sample web app and create redirect to get an access token. That takes too much effort. On this page, you can easily generate an access token by setting your redirect URI to this link.

Go to the page, fill your client ID in the form and hit submit. You will then be presented with an access token that you can now copy and use in your app.

Getting the List Of Popular Posts

STV 3.0 has web service capabilities and it makes it easy to consume an API and get the variables you need quickly. Create a new SCTableViewController in your app and add the following bit of code to the viewDidLoad method.

NSString* url = @"https://api.instagram.com/v1/media/popular/"
 
SCWebServiceDefinition *definition = [SCWebServiceDefinition
                                        definitionWithBaseURL:url
                                        fetchObjectsAPI:@""
                                        resultsKeyName:@"data"
                                        resultsDictionaryKeyNamesString:@"images"];
 
    NSString *accessToken = @"19816542.xxxxx.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
    [definition.fetchObjectsParameters setValue:accessToken forKey:@"access_token"];
 
 
    SCPropertyDefinition *imagePropertyDef = [definition propertyDefinitionWithName:@"images"];
    imagePropertyDef.title = @"Images";
    imagePropertyDef.type = SCPropertyTypeAutoDetect;
 
 
    SCArrayOfObjectsSection *popularPostsSection = [SCArrayOfObjectsSection sectionWithHeaderTitle:nil webServiceDefinition:definition batchSize:7];
    popularPostsSection.itemsAccessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryNone;
 
 
    popularPostsSection.sectionActions.cellForRowAtIndexPath = ^SCCustomCell*(SCArrayOfItemsSection *itemsSection, NSIndexPath *indexPath){
        SCCustomCell *customCell = [SCCustomCell cellWithText:nil
                                         objectBindingsString:@"3:user.username"
                                                      nibName:@"PostCell"];
 
[self.tableViewModel addSection:popularPostsSection];

The code above creates a new web service definition with the Instagram endpoint for “Popular posts”. The access code is added as a parameter. (You should now paste the code you created in the first step.)

A new section for our table is now created and added.

Designing the List Of Popular Posts

In the sample project, you will see that we have created a custom cell that will house all our posts. This cell is designed using a modified version of the Socioville template from App Design Vault.

This version also uses the SCTheme theming capabilities of STV 3.0+.

Here is the navigation bar image we are using in the template.

And we configure the navigation bar by using the following code in the iPhoneTheme.sct file

NavigationBar
{
    backgroundImage: "menubar.png";
}

and this to apply the style in code

[theme styleObject:self.navigationController.navigationBar usingThemeStyle:@"NavigationBar"];

You will find more configurations in the iPhoneTheme.sct file which is included in the project. Below you will see how the app looks with and without the design.

Implementing the Detail View

When setting up the table section that holds the popular posts, we create a hook to show a custom detail view controller using the code below

popularPostsSection.sectionActions.detailViewControllerForRowAtIndexPath = ^UIViewController*(SCTableViewSection *section, NSIndexPath *indexPath){
 
        DetailViewController* detail = [[DetailViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@"DetailViewController" bundle:nil];
 
        id userId = [self.userIds objectForKey:indexPath];
 
        detail.userId = [userId intValue];
 
        return detail;
    };

Our DetailViewController looks like this in our nib file.

In the detail view, we want to load the profile information of the person that posted the original image we have selected. We pass on the user id to the detail view controller and use this to query the instagram API again.

This time we do it differently because our result is not a list of items but a single user profile.

NSString* userURL =  @"https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/%d/";
userURL = [NSString stringWithFormat:userURL, self.userId];
 
 self.userDefinition = [SCWebServiceDefinition
                           definitionWithBaseURL:userURL
                           fetchObjectsAPI:@""
                           resultsKeyName:nil
                           resultsDictionaryKeyNamesString:nil];
 
    NSString *accessToken = @"19816542.cb1db93.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
 
    [self.userDefinition setAtomicResultKeyName:@"data"];
    [self.userDefinition.fetchObjectsParameters setValue:accessToken forKey:@"access_token"];
 
 
    SCWebServiceStore *userStore = (SCWebServiceStore *)[self.userDefinition generateCompatibleDataStore];
 
    [userStore asynchronousFetchObjectsWithOptions:[SCDataFetchOptions options]
                                                 success:^(NSArray* res)
    {
        if(res.count > 0){
 
            [self getUserDataFromResult:res[0]];
        }
    }
    failure: ^(NSError *error)
    {
        NSLog(@"Failed due to: %@", error);
    }];

From the code above, we create the web service definition but this time we set the resultsKeyName to nil and the atomicResultsKeyName to “data”. Then we create SCWebServiceStore to asynchronously pull our user data.

This is then displayed on the screen in the method getUserDataFromResult:

-(void)getUserDataFromResult:(NSDictionary*)result{
 
    NSString* fullname = [result objectForKey:@"full_name"];
    NSString* profilePicLink = [result objectForKey:@"profile_picture"];
 
    NSDictionary* counts = [result objectForKey:@"counts"];
 
    NSString* photoCount = [[counts objectForKey:@"media"] stringValue];
    NSString* followerCount = [[counts objectForKey:@"followed_by"] stringValue];
 
    [self.photoCountLabel setText:photoCount];
    [self.followerCountLabel setText:followerCount];
 
    UIImage* image = [UIImage imageWithData:[NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL URLWithString:profilePicLink]]];
    [self.profilePictureImageView setImage:image];
 
    [self.mainImageView setImage:image];
 
    [self.usernameLabel setText:fullname];
 
}

This is the final result of the detail view. The recent posts from the current user is pulled using the same technique as the list on the first ViewController.

Download the Final Sample Project

You can download the full sample here and browse the project to see how everything was implemented in full detail.

Would you like more design templates to make your apps stand out? You can get our free Ocean template by signing up here. It will be sent directly to your inbox.

• Part 1: Sample Project
• Part 2: Sample Project

The template I used is one 23 templates we currently have at App Design Vault. It is called Fitpulse and I would like to give it to you for free.

Download the Fitpulse sample project here.

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