Power 1010

UIKeyboardTypeNumberPad, the DONE button and iOS 4

2010-06-10T12:23:00.001-05:00

The post you are about to read is fairly technical and is mostly written for the sake of the iPhone development community, so if you're just a fan of Meters or a friend of mine (you too, Mom), feel free to ignore this post.

One of Apple's big shortcomings in the iPhone SDK is input methods. Apple gives developers very little support in terms of custom input methods, which is why it's so frustrating that the 10-button numeric keyboard that is provided in the SDK is missing something as crucial as a "DONE" button.

Thanks to the work of a development team called Neoos, many app developers found a workaround to this issue by adding a custom button on top of the default numeric keyboard. But in iOS 4, this method stops working. I did some digging and found out everything I could about the issue and want to share it with any developers who might be looking for the same solution I am.

If you're reading this I'm assuming you understand how Neoos' solution to the problem worked. In iPhone OS 3, when a UIKeyboardWillShowNotification was sent, their custom method iterated through all the subviews on the screen to find the keyboard, and then added a custom button on top of it.

The problem is this: in iOS 4 (at least, in the Gold Master Seed available to developers as of a few days ago), the keyboard view is not instantiated by the time the UIKeyboardWillShowNotification is sent, so it's impossible to add the custom button to it.

The best solution I've discovered is easy to implement but doesn't provide the same end result that we had in OS 3. By switching from the UIKeyboardWillShowNotification to the UIKeyboardDidShowNotification, the custom method which searches for the keyboard and adds the button isn't called until the keyboard is already on screen. This means that it is guaranteed to find the keyboard view and add the done button. The disadvantage will only be noticed by particularly observant users: as the keyboard slides into place, the bottom left button is still blank, and once the keyboard is in place, the "DONE" button simply appears.

For now, this seems to be the best solution available to us as developers. If anyone manages to find a better solution, I'd love to hear it, and I hope that the information here was helpful in finding that solution.

Brief Updates and Feedback Request

2010-06-08T23:25:00.001-05:00

iPhone 4: I want it. That's really all I need to say.

Meters: A FREE, iAd-supported version of Meters is coming to the App Store later this month. Tell your friends!

Feedback: What's your favorite feature of Meters? What would you choose to improve? What would you add? Let me know by emailing me or by posting either in the comments below or on our Facebook page.

Coming Soon to Meters

2010-05-26T15:26:00.002-05:00

For those of you already using Meters (or trying to decide whether or not to download it), know that there's a lot of functionality in store for future updates, and I'm always looking for suggestions for other features to add. Here's just a few things I'm planning on implementing:

Downloading workout history from Concept2.
Graphing your progress over time (ie, 2k splits).
Viewing calories burned for a specific workout.

I've got one other major feature planned that I don't want to mention here yet since it's still a ways off and I don't want anyone else to steal the idea. Now that classes are over for the summer I should have more time to work on Meters, so I'm hoping to have the next update ready within a week or two. Again, let me know if you have any features you'd like to see added.

Welcome to Power 1010

2010-05-26T14:32:00.000-05:00

I am a rower and a nerd. It's not the most common combination, I know. If you're here, chances are you're at least one or the other. For my fellow nerds: a "power ten" is when you take ten strokes as hard as you can in a rowing race to catch or pass an opponent (like using a mushroom in Mario Kart). For my fellow rowers: 1010 is the binary equivalent of the number ten.

Let's get back to me: I've been rowing since I started high school (7 years ago), and I'm a computer science student at Washington University in St. Louis and especially a fan of the iPhone platform. So far, I've combined these interests into my first commercial application, "Meters - The Rower's Logbook," which you can buy right now on the App Store (hint hint).

This blog is for me to talk about the ongoing development process for Meters and any other projects I might work on in the future, as well as, well, whatever I feel like talking about. I hope that you find it to be some combination of informative and entertaining.