• Beginning iOS Development
• Getting Started
• Objective C
• Memory Management
• Patterns
• Frameworks
• Tools
• Sample Applications

Sample Applications

iOS applications fall into one of two broad classes: single view or multiple view. As these terms imply, a single-view application contains a single view into the model. (See Model-View-Controller under “Patterns” above.) Under a single-view app, the information displayed may change over time, but the view into the model is more or less static.

For example, a simple weather application is single view. It has a map of a selected area in the center of the screen, ringed by panels showing current weather conditions, the five-day forecast, and so on. The temperature or precipitation can change over the course of day, but the current weather conditions panel stays put. Radar information may sweep across the area, but the map is always centered on the screen.

In fact, the simple weather application might not be that simple in terms of the data it collects. Perhaps it gathers weekly and monthly averages for temperature, precipitation, wind speed, and humidity. However, you would never know because as a single-view application it can give you only a limited view into the model. In other words, it is not the amount of data collected that determines whether an application is multiple view or single view. The single-view weather application can become multiple view simply by uniting the current with the weekly and monthly averages and displaying it as a series of graphs comparing now with the recent past.

Beginning iOS Development: A Safari Tutorial starts with relatively simple single-view and multiple-view applications. Increasingly sophisticated applications involving tables, various navigational methods, animations, and other UI enhancements are presented in the Intermediate and Advanced iOS Development guides.

The first two sample applications under the Beginning iOS Development: A Safari Guide are single view. In addition to introducing the primary tools of iOS development, Xcode, and Interface Builder, the applications show how to handle basic user interaction. The third sample app is multiple view and underscores the importance of the controller in MVC.

• Beginning iOS 5 Development: Exploring the iOS SDK, by Dave Mark, Jack Nutting, and Jeff LaMarche, Apress
• Chapter 2, “Appeasing the Tiki Gods”
• Chapter 3, “Handling Basic Interaction”
• Chapter 6, “Multiview Applications”

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