Quick jQuery hack to fix position:fixed toolbars in iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch
This is just a quick fix if your postion:fixed elements end up in weird places when your site is viewed on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.
Say you have a div with an id of "#footer" that you want to stay at the bottom of the page. If you set it's position to "fixed" and set the bottom to "0px". When viewed on an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch, the footer may end up in the middle of your content if you have a long page.
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//stick the footer at the bottom of the page if we're on an iPad/iPhone due to viewport/page bugs in mobile webkit
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if(navigator.platform == 'iPad' || navigator.platform == 'iPhone' || navigator.platform == 'iPod')
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{
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$("#footer").css("position", "static");
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};
A theory about the iPhone app store
My theory is that in 2 years there will be so many applications in the iPhone app store that it will be impossible to achieve success. That only the early developers will find any measure of success.
I say this because it seems to be the way the Apple software ecosystem works. There are a few applications, written by developers who have been working on the Apple platform for a great number of years, that are constantly recommended and very successful.
Monotouch Has an Uphill battle ahead
I love me some Mono and love the Mono team, but Novell really screwed the pooch with the release of MonoTouch. It had such promise, write iPhone apps using C# instead of Objective-C. But it has some problems.
- I
t requires XCode. - I’m not sure if they can get around this one. It seems like they should be able to. All XCode does is call GCC and compile the code. My guess is that it has to do with the licensing of the iPhone SDK and/or the iPhone libraries that you can’t distribute. If you could bundle the iPhone headers, it seems to me that you could compile an iPhone app on any platform that supports GCC.DOH! As Miguel reminds me in the comments, it doesn't use XCode but the iPhone simulator is only available on Intel Macs. (1) - It costs 400 frickin’ dollars. – So now, not only do you have to buy a Mac, pay Apple $99 per year to get in the App store (which is no guarantee) but if you want to use MonoTouch you have to pay $399 U.S.
So what you have to ask your self is: Is learning Objective-C something that I really can’t/won’t do to become an iPhone developer?
There are a lot of benefits to developing for the iPhone using MonoTouch. Access to most of the .NET library. LINQ is available, WCF. Miguel DeIcaza has a good explanation for why Monotouch costs $400, which he'll talk about in an upcoming episode of Herding Code. But I think that the price is going to really slow MonoTouch adoption.
(1) That's what I get for writing a blog post ahead of time and not reviewing it before it's scheduled to post.
Apple software update on Windows
Joe Wilcox has a piece here where he talks about how Windows iTunes owners are being prompted to install Safari 3.1 by Apple Software Update even though they haven't installed any version of Safari on their Windows PC before.
I've had Safari 3 for Windows installed for quite a while at work as a test platform. Occasionally, until I told Apple Software Update to shut up, it would prompt me to install iTunes + QuickTime since I didn't have it installed. So it's not that Apple is pushing Safari specifically through Apple Software Update, it's pushing Apple Software period. Which seems to be the same thing as Windows Update. I don't see it as particularly aggressive. The Google Pack updater will suggest other items that you haven't installed yet. It just seems to be the way smart software updaters work.
iTunes movie rentals? Gimme a break
This big news in the announcement for me wasn't the rental part, it was the "Fox is including iPod compatible versions of the content on the DVD you just bought.". It's an acknowledgment, at least in my mind, that the studio recognizes that people don't want to pay twice for their content. Sure I can buy "Heroes" on DVD and then try to rip it, if I can find the right decrypting software and want to take 4-30+ hours encoding it. Or I can buy the DVD, then buy the season off of iTunes/Amazon/whatever so they work on my iPod with minimal effort on my part. But doesn't a simple "Add to library from DVD" option save a lot of time? I hope that more studios follow suit and also include other formats (at least .wmv).
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Herding Code Podcast
- Herding Code 92: Dru Sellers and Rob Reynolds on Nu 8/27/2010
- Herding Code 91: Listener-Powered Lightning Round 8/19/2010
- Herding Code 90: Sara Chipps on Girl Develop IT and Girls Developing Software 8/12/2010
- Herding Code 89: Vaidy Gopalakrishnan on IIS Developer Express 8/5/2010
- Herding Code 88: Julie Lerman on Entity Framework 4 7/21/2010