Creating our Own MainWindow.xib for Xcode 4.2

MainWindow.xib file is no longer seen in Xcode 4.2. And this is one of the important things a developer should know especially if the developer wants to create UI using Interface Builder.

Let's start!

Create a new Xcode project

Choose Empty Application

Add a Project Name, Company Identifier, for now, let's use iPhone as our device family, others are optional.

Choose a directory where you would like to save your work.

Add a New File.

Click "iOS" category, scroll down and choose an Empty .xib file.

Choose the same Device family from the one you have chosen a while ago when you created your project.

You may name this .xib file anyway you want, but let's just name it "MainWindow."

On your MainWindow.xib, click the "File's Owner," the yellowish box on the left side. Click the Identity Inspector, the third button found on the upper part of the Utilities Panel. Change its Class to "UIApplication."

Search for "Object" in the Objects Library.

Drag it to the "Placeholder/Objects" Panel, the same line with the yellow and reddish box.

Click the dragged Object, and change it's class to your AppDelegate Class.

Search for a Window Object in the Objects Library, drag it to the Placeholder/Objects Panel.

Right-click File's Owner (yellowish box), connect the "delegate" outlet to the AppDelegate Object (yellow box).

Go to AppDelegate.h, add "IBOutlet" to your UIWindow property. Go back to MainWindow.xib, right-click AppDelegate Object, and connect the "window" variable to the Window Object added a while ago.

Click the .xcodeproj file, go to Summary tab, under iPhone / iPod Deployment Info, change the Main Interface to the name of your .xib file. In our example, MainWindow.

Lastly, open AppDelegate.m, under applications:didFinishLaunching:withOptions function, comment out all the codes, but leave these codes:

[self.window makeKeyAndVisible];

    return YES;

You may add UILabels or UIButtons on your window object in Interface Builder, to check that you have successfully connected and created your own MainWindow.xib. You should see your drag and dropped objects when you run it in your simulator.

Done! :)

Introduction to XCode

Hi! For our first lesson, let's get to know the Xcode IDE.

Assumptions:

1. You have no idea about the primary language in creating iOS applications, which is Objective-C.
2. At least, you know how to code in C language.
3. You are very familiar with Object Oriented Programming.

Objectives:

1. To know the IDE that we will be using
2. To be able to make simple applications
3. To build and run our programs on our console.

You may download Xcode from http://developer.apple.com/ and go to iOS Dev Center.

Xcode is an Integrated Development Environment that lets you write down your code, compile, debug and execute your program.

I'll assume that you have finished installing Xcode on your computer.

To create projects in Xcode, let us run the application first.

1. Choose "Create a new Xcode project."

2. Choose Command Line Tool (on the right panel) under Mac OS X (from the left panel).

Since this is going to be our first time, let us be familiar with running our programs in Command Line Tool first.

3. Name your project under "Product Name"

4. Add a Company Identifier

5. Choose Foundation type

6. Uncheck "Use Automatic Referencing Counting"

7. Choose a directory to save your project.

We will discuss what Foundation is once we'll start our lesson on Frameworks, and we will also discuss what Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) is once we got hold of the Memory Management of Objective-C. For now, uncheck "Use Automatic Referencing Counting."

Tadaaa! Here's your project!

Look at the upper right corner of your IDE, you'll see that the left most button under the "View" category has been selected, which in turn, shows the "Navigator" of our program.

The left most icon inside the red box is the "Project Navigator." It lets us navigate to the different folders and files that were created automatically by the IDE when we create our project. We will discuss the use of other icons on the Navigator Pane once we "need" to use them.

The left and the middle button under the "View" category is now selected. The orange one is the Debugging Area. On the upper right corner of the Debugging Area, you will see three buttons, the currently selected button is the one at the middle. The middle button shows both the Variables (on the left) and the Console area (on the right). The left button shows only the Variable Area and the right buttons shows only the Console Area.

The right pane inside the green box is the Utilities Area. The upper part of the Utilities Area has the "File Inspector" which gives you information about the selected file from the "Project Navigator" (in our case, the main.m file). The lower part shows the different libraries, the currently selected library is the Object Library. The Object Library is very useful when we start creating UI for our iOS Applications. For now, don't mind it yet.

Let's Build and Run the application!

To build: 

Command + B //this will compile your code

To run: 
Command + R //this will run your code

As we can see from our main.m file, there's an NSLog(@"Hello World"); code. We can also put codes on that area inside @autoreleasepool{}. We will explain on our next lesson the reason of putting our codes inside the scope of autoreleasepool.

We shall see this result on our Console Area when we run our program(you know where it is, right?):

I do hope some of you learned something. And thank you for your time reading this. :)

Where to go from here:
http://iosmadesimple.blogspot.com/2012/09/introduction-to-objective-c.html