Apps for iPhone 12 are the need of the hour for the enterprise as well as for games, as Apple is a market leader in the mobile world for years with its iPhone and iPad series. And now that Huawei is screwed up in toto! It is also holding a large portion of market shares in the mobile platform world over and it has started manufacture in India. Solely because of this reason developer’s clients would like to have their app placed in Apple’s app store, thus becoming one of the compelling reasons for developers to learn, design the UI and build the apps for iPhone.

This post aims to be a guide for developers through the process of building apps for iPhone.

Why to Develop Apps for iPhone?

Developing apps for iPhone to be placed in Apple app store is seen as must for businesses, who develop their business apps for the enterprise.

Apps for iOS Developer

Apple likes things simple, and this applies to their products and frameworks. iOS is the operating system which powers all Apple’s mobile devices. These include to be relaunched we think iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad.

Objective-C and now Swift is the programming language for Apple. Along with it, developers will also develop apps for iPhone with the Cocoa Touch, the programming framework driving user interaction on iOS.

UI Design of apps for iPhone structure

The methodology that governs any app development is also applicable while developing and designing UI of apps for iPhone. This includes planning and sketching. First of all developer need to have an idea for what the app is going to do.

Sketching

It is recommend to sketch some rough ideas for a few pages (or views) of your application. Just draw a rectangle shape, maybe 5 or 6 shapes on a sheet of paper, then draw the features you want on each view of your app.

At first construct a brief collection of the different UI bar elements:

Status Bar – Displays device’s current battery level, 3G connection, bars of reception, phone carrier, and a whole lot more.

Navigation Bar – Gives your users the option to navigate between page hierarchies. This often includes a button on the left side of the bar to enable the user to return to the previous app view.

Toolbar – Appears at the bottom of the iPhone app. This will hold a few icons tied to some functions such as Share, Download, Delete, etc.

Tab Bar – Very similar to the toolbar, except now you’re working with tabs. When a user taps on a tab icon it’ll automatically be highlighted. This bar is used to switch between views instead of offering direct functionality.

This list only contains the toolbars one could find in most apps for iPhones. If there are other styles to consider, that are available in Apple’s iOS UI Element Usage Guidelines. It is better to refer to this documentation.

Designing Photoshop Mock ups for apps for iPhone

It is easy to designing graphics for the web as it is a fairly straightforward process, but it is a bit more complicated when it comes to iPhone app design. If you are looking to build an app you really should create pixel-perfect mock up designs from the start.

Photoshop mock up for apps for iPhone

Designing photos for apps for iPhone contains 2 different design styles – regular and retina

Building with Template Elements

It recommended to use the iPhone GUI PSD available in the Internet It includes all of the design resources one may need to build any standard iPhone app layout. After the download is over, unzip new file to get the PSD file, and just open it with Photoshop.

UX – iPhone GUI

This is a big file with just too many elements. To make things easier one can press V activate the Move Tool and click on the “Auto-Select” on its option bar, then select the “Layer” rather than “Group”. With the settings, one can click on any element and Photoshop will bring its corresponding layer!

Developing Apps in Xcode

The developer tool for iOS and Mac OS X programming is named as Xcode. While running OS X High Sierra or later you can find Xcode and all applicable packages for free in the Mac App Store.

Single view application

After the installation is completed, launch the Xcode and its welcome screen should come up. From here a developer can load an older project or choose to make a new one. Click “Create a new Xcode project“, then the template window will come up with a few options. Under iOS > Application, click on “Single View Application” and hit “Next”. You can give the new app a name, such as Test (preferably no spaces), then on the Company Identifier, type in any word such as ‘mycompany’, and finally pick a directory and hit “Save”.

Xcode will build the file directory and send you into a new window for working. Developer should see a lot of file options listed, but the folder which is named after the application is the primary focus.

Storyboard

With the Xcode the storyboard file holds all nib views in a single editor pane. From here a developer can remove and add UI elements and features with ease.

Additionally developer will come across .h and .m files in the same folder group. These are short filenames for header and implementation code. These files are where you write all the Objective-C functions and variables required for the app to run. This is how Xcode works with MVC (Model, View, Controller), which is the reason that we need 2 files for each controller.

MVC Programming Hierarchy

To understand how the app works you’ll need to understand its programming architecture. With Model, View, Controller (MVC) as a foundation, Xcode can separate all of your displays and interface code from your logic and processing functions, and there isn’t really another option to choose.

Model view controller
Object of each one of the MVC is explained below:

Model – Holder of all logic and core data. This includes variables, connections to external RSS feeds or images, detailed functions, and number crunching. This layer is completely detached from developer’s views so that one could easily change views and still have the same data working.

View – A screen or display style in your application. A table list, profile page, article summary page, audio player, video player, these are all examples of views. One can change their styles and remove elements but developer will still be working with the same data in the Model.

Controller – It is an intermediary between the other two. You connect objects in your view to a View Controller, which passes the information to and from the Model. So in this way it’s possible to have a user tap on a button and register this in the model. Then run a log out function and through the same controller pass a message “successfully logged out!”.
So basically developer’s model holds all the information and functions that are needed to be displayed somewhere onscreen. But models cannot interact with the screen, only views can. Views are mostly all visuals, and it can only pull data through a View Controller. The Controller is actually a much more refined way of hiding back end data from the front end design. In this way developer can renovate the design several times over while not losing any functionality.

With this knowledge it shouldn’t be hard to begin building the first few apps for iPhone, otherwise there are many companies that specialize in making them, that can be hired for developing apps for iPhone.

Check it out election app for iphone now in app store