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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-19T01:42:49+00:00

Short introduction Working on my first commercial iOS app, XCode 3.2 has proven to

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Short introduction

Working on my first commercial iOS app, XCode 3.2 has proven to be far more challenging of an environment than I anticipated. Features I’ve grown fond of in other environments (For example Eclipse for Java, or FDT for ActionScript) are hard to come by, if not impossible in XCode. XCode 4 seems to address a lot of my sores, so I’m not complaining, but I have to stick to 3.2 for beta-reasons, at least for the development of this current app.

Developer Videos – templates

For one, I gave up the search for comfortable code templates and went with the hard-to-get-right TextMacros: typing in short pieces of code, hit escape for the pulldown of completion suggestions and pick one. Then I started watching the development video’s at http://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2010/. To my surprise, there were a number of presenters that seem to ‘magically’ insert pieces of code without typing anything, or clicking anything with the mouse.

Examples

Example 1: In session 104 "Designing Apps with Scroll Views", Eliza Block (starts at 9 minutes) keeps adding readymade pieces of code to her demo, effectively working around the hazards of live-coding.

Example 2: In session 123 "Building Animation Driven Interfaces", Tyler Hawkings (starts at 25 minutes) uses some kind of template to add animation code to his presentation.

They’re not…

  • …typing in any TextMacro’s, that’s for sure.
  • …using an off-screen copy&pasteboard because XCode does not lose focus for an instant.
  • …clicking in an off-screen application, because the mouse does not leave the screen.

Questions

I have two questions for you:

  1. What are these presenters using to perform this feat in their presentations.
  2. Is this usable in the context of day-to-day coding, instead of just presenting?

Cheers,
Eric-Paul.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Josh Shaffer, developer at Apple and co-presenter of Eliza Block at the WWDC, was kind enough to answer my question via Twitter. He wrote the following: “it’s a small app that inserts a pre-defined list of pieces of text. Only helps with coding if you already wrote your app”

    EDIT: Thank god for Twitter. Josh Shaffer confirmed that the tool they were using is the DemoMonkey.

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