LinkedIn open sources its exposé code for iOS | Hacker News Reader

LinkedIn open sources its exposé code for iOS

engineering.linkedin.com

83 pointsiag11 comments

I think this is really great. I started iOS development a few months ago and I find one of the hardest parts about making applications is differentiating the design. While I like the standard iOS design elements, to make a professional looking application you have to spend a lot of time tweaking the design. For me specifically it has been UITableView and the corresponding cells. I am glad that this gives me another option to explore and obviously I would have to customize this as well. But its a step in the right direction and hopefully other companies follow suit.

Maybe its just me but what would really make my day is some sort of equivalent of Bootstrap for iOS applications. A set of Objective-C classes that standardize and make it easy to quickly reach a certain level of quality design.

What you describe is contradictory. The default iOS design elements are there precisely to serve as a sort of "Bootstrap" for iOS applications.

Everything 'looks the same' because so many people use the (good) defaults, just like how most Bootstrap pages look similar (or the same), depending on how much work has been put into making them unique.

You are right. I realize I contradicted myself. I guess what I mean is that Bootstrap lowers the barrier for good web design substantially and shares some of Twitter's best known methods. Similarly I wish a big app development company would share some of their experiences and maybe provide some insight on the best way to customize and modify the existing Apple UI elements. For example, I can modify the existing design by using several subviews or imageviews or drawing layers but I don't know which is the best way in terms of performance or if other companies do this.

Check out my site, http://cocoacontrols.com

Been a regular visitor for months - one of the best sites regarding iOS development. You, sir, deserve an upvote.

You should take a look at three20 and Tapku. They might be what you are looking for. three20 was built by the original Facebook iOS developer and is used to do things like photo galleries in many apps (I haven't used it in a while so I'm not sure how well maintained it is).

This looks nice (and it's great the LI is open sourcing it) but it doesn't seem like a great alternative to the tab bar. With the tab bar you select a tab and get instant feedback above it. If you don't like what you see you can select the next tab. Two touches. With this you have to select, dismiss, and then select the next menu item. Not really a great solution for moving through information quickly especially as you have to give a second for the view present/dismiss animations - unlike tab bar.

"Mobile Software Imagineer"? What is this? Disney-ification?

I'm a little lost as to why this needs to be done with the containers in iOS 5. Couldn't you achieve the same thing using a regular UIView and some UIButtons with fancy images? Or I'm I missing what's going on here?

So does this design limit me to 4 menu options like the LinkedIn app?

Nope, you can add as many screens as you'd like. Check out the sample app, which starts with 3 but lets you add/delete screens.

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