FWIW, regardless of how OT it is I would be interested in the answers
as well.
I know of one person who has built an application template that he
bases new apps on, but am not aware of anyone doing this with the UI.
I think the reliance on Interface Builder is partly to blame; unless
you code all your UI elements by hand to start with there is nothing
to reuse. Not easily, anyway. But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
janine
On Jul 31, 2009, at 8:44 PM, Paul Hoadley wrote:
Hello,
(I hope this isn't too far OT. Feel free to flame. :-))
Obviously a very common pattern in WO is finding common elements in
one's UI and breaking those out into a re-usable component---
encapsulation and code re-use. I've recently waded into some Cocoa
Touch development, and one of the first things I tried to do with a
UI I was create the equivalent of such a "re-usable component". It
turned out to be harder than I thought---I won't go into the
specifics, because it's even further off-topic for this list. I
just had a quick question for any WO people also working with Cocoa
Touch: am I trying to do something that would be considered unusual
on that platform? I posted on Apple's iPhone developer forums, and
got a couple of basically helpful answers, but, to be honest, they
didn't smell quite right. For example, someone wrote:
What you're trying to do is something that no one else is doing.
There is no 'usual way.' UI's on iPhone are generally much simpler
than those on desktop apps so there's very little reason to have
plugins or component UIs like you describe.
I find this hard to believe. In any case, sorry for the off-topic
post. Feel free to limit answers to "You're crazy" or "Of course
you can make re-usable UI components", or even reply off-list.
