SteveDerico.com

iPhone Developer

LayerCake for Mac + Photoshop Script

When I heard about Layer Cake for Mac, I thought my days of slicing and exporting layers in Photoshop were over. I was right, kinda. If you haven’t heard about Layer Cake, it’s a great little app where you can drag in a .psd and out comes image files for each layer. You can learn more here.

Sounds good, but there is one catch. You have to name each layer with the file extension you would like to have exported. i.e. “LayerName001.png”. This is a pain and it kills the “it just works” aspect of the Layer Cake I was excited about. 

However, I hacked together a simple adobe script that will add “.png” to all of your layer names. Simply add this script to your /Applications/Photoshop/Presets/Scripts folder, restart Photoshop, and select File->Scripts ->Rename Layers. Your .psd and Layer Cake will now play nice. 

Download Rename Layers Photoshop Script on GitHub

New Years Resolutions Review Q1 2012

2012 is just over 25% complete, so I thought I would do a quick review of my New Years Resolutions. Most of these items are solo tasks, but I am looking for someone to join me in a monthly podcast. If you are in interested, @stevederico me on twitter. 

  • Ship One New App per Month - YES
  • Speak at Least Once per Month - MISSED ONCE
  • Start Beginning iOS Video Series and Release at least once per month - NO
  • Read One Book per month - NO 
  • Meet with at least 2 of My Heroes Directly - NOT YET
  • Reach Top 25 in an App Category - NOT YET
  • Run a Marathon - NO
  • Workout Twice a Week - YES
  • Wake up before 9 AM on Weekdays - YES
  • Work on 3 or more Open Source Projects - NO
  • Keep Doing What I Love - YES

I recently gave a talk titled “Idea to App Store” at the Founders and Founders Do-A-Thon. I covered processes like gathering features, building a prototype, finding a developers, and how to market your product. You can download the slides below. 

Download Slides

Updated: iPhone Developer’s ToolKit

Being a iPhone App developer can be hard, doing without the proper software can make it even harder. Here is a list of my favorite iPhone Developer websites and resources.

Learning

iTunes U- Stanford CS193p Courses - The best way to learn objective-c and it’s 100% free.

WWDC Session Videos - Apple Engineers teaching you the ins and outs of the iOS SDK. Again, Free.

Apple’s Documentation- Apple does an incredible job with their documentation. It is almost fun to read. Almost.

StackOverFlow- Developers helping Developers with bugs and misc problems. If your question isn’t answered, post up and receive a reply in minutes!

Quora - Great Question and Answer site, with even better users.

FreelanceSwitch- How do I find my First Customer? What is the best Account Software out there? (See Below) FreelanceSwitch is the blog for Freelancers from novice to expert.

iOS Programming by Aaron Hillegass - An NeXT developer gone author this guy wrote the book on Objective-c development, literally.

Making

Parse - Love making apps but hate setting up  servers? Ya, so does everyone.

SimpleGeo- Dead Simple Location Data API. Stay tuned for an iOS SimpleGeo Post.

Crittercism - Automatic bug tracking for your apps

Dropbox- Keep your files with you everywhere you go.

GitHub- Social Coding and Public/Private Repos. Pair with GIT.

TestFlight- Quickly and easily share iOS beta builds.

Dribbble - Love Design? Design Challenged? Follow the world’s best designers on Dribbble.

AppCooker- The best iOS Mockup App. iPad Only

Charles Web Proxy - Monitor HTTP data over your network for debugging client-server apps.

Monitoring

Localytics- Mobile Analytics, track button presses, views counts, and even send data back to yourself.

FreshBooks- Time tracking, Invoicing, and Project Management. All the stuff you hate, made simple.

inDinero- Business accounting on AutoPilot.

AppAnnie - App Revenue and App Store Tracking

Miscellaneous

Highrise - Keep track of potential leads and projects

RescueTime - Just how productive are you?

Thyme- Simple Timer Mac App

CloudApp - Dead Simple File Sharing Service

Pandora- Online Radio tailored specifically for you.

TurnTable.fm - Play music with friends.

Hacker News - Daily Recap and discussion of all things tech.

TheVerge - Tech Gadget and Gizmos without the BS

Kickstarter - Have an idea but need money? Raise some money or fund a project with others.

This article was written by Steve Derico an iPhone Developer and founder of Bixby Apps. You can follow him on Twitter @stevederico or email him at steve@stevederico.com.

Make the Switch: Chrome to Safari

I recently switched from Google Chrome to Safari and wish I did it sooner. Below are a few features on Chrome and their Safari counterparts.

1. Favicon Bookmark Bar

Chrome lets you drag the favicon of your favorite sites to your bookmark bar and use these to make a simple one-click icon.

Safari’s bookmark bar doesn’t support favicons, but it does have a “Top Sites” homepage. Top Sites updates dynamically and provides the one-click jump to your most frequent sites.

2. Single Bar

Chrome’s Omnibar allows you to search, type the name of a favorite site, or enter a URL.

Olivier Poitrey has created a great Omnibar extension for Safari. It is free and open source.

3. Memory Leaks

Google Chrome for Mac is notorious for leaking memory and crashing

Safari has been much more stable and more friendly on RAM.

ProTip 

By default, Safari opens new links in a new window. Run the command below in Terminal to force links to open in a new tab.

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true