设计iPhone应用程序

Question

I am into designing a new iPhone application. My application is will contain almost all iPhone SDK concepts including core data, server integration, location services. Is there any design decisions I should keep in mind? My plan was to go by designing a controller class for each iPhone app screen and also any utility classes to be used. Any guidance will be really appreciated.

Answer 1

I forget who said this first, but it goes like this: The first project you do in any new technology will probably be very bad!

This is similar to these sage words from Fred Brooks - "Plan to throw one away; you will anyway"

So the best way is to wade right in, get dirty, light up the dark corners and learn what works for you. Then you'll most likely have some very specific questions based on your experiences!

Answer 2

This is a tough subject to talk about generally. Design approaches that work for some will fail for others.

It would probably help to know more about what you are trying to do. For a counter-example, I'm working on a game. I create an OpenGL context and from that moment on I'm managing assets like shaders, textures, mesh data, sounds,... . The way I've designed my project will pretty much be useless to you.

However the best advice that I can come up is to really figure out what you are trying to do. Create mockups of your GUI and document workflows. Do sketches of GUIs. Become an expert in the domain in which you want your application to work. Develop a deep understanding of what you are trying to do.

Once you have the GUI figured out, start working on the other end of the Model-View-Controller approach - figure out what data you need in order to provide the GUI that you've designed. Not all data structures are equal. What's the best data design for the domain you're working on?

Once you have the view and model figured out you need to glue everything together with controllers. There's lots of trick and traps here. Do you use threading to prevent the GUI from blocking? Do you make direct calls to objects or do you decouple and use notifications?

But this is the public appearance of your application. You might want to track usage data - consider what you wish to track and append that to your design. Errors happen, so think how to approach them.

However, it's hard to be more detailed without more details than what you've provided. Every application has it's own quirks and gotchas. It's nearly impossible to talk about this in a general sense.