Documentation is a personal project, and not finished. Precisely it is just a novice iOS developer's first project.
There are two reasons I decided to create an Apple documentation reader on iPad.
First is the experience using Xcode to search / read documents is not perfect. Apple did a good job writing developer documents, but I find it's hard to get intended result when searching. And the reading experience is hardly good with the small font. Ideas that making a documentation reader App on iPad, taking advantage of the retina screen, with minimal features but a developer can get their result fast and precise, with improved reading experience come out of my mind.
Second is I had been self-studying iOS development at home for a while, as a beginner I thought a project like a this suits my current ability.
So I decided to do it. I want to name it Xcode Reader, but I am afraid with the trademark issue, so I change it to Documentation.
It took me pretty long time with the code part, then I made a mistake that I did the design job myself instead of finding a designer, so the project took me even more time. Now the App's basic part finished. But because I already spent too much time at home learning iOS development and this project, I decided to suspend the project temporarily and find myself a job first.
Now I put the project on Github with several purposes.
- Though I am still a novice, this project will be a demo to support my potential job interview.
- I did my best to make Documentation smart and good. But my ability is limit, I sure know many details of this app and some code sucks. I will continue the project sooner or later, If you are interested in this project, and have some suggestions on workflow, details, code parts, etc, please let me know.
- I want to find a designer to help me to tweak the UI, unfinished design work like Icon. If you are interested in this project, feel free to contact me, we can discuss the detail.
I am Song Hui, 24 year old, an iOS programmer from China, here is my email [email protected].
http://d.pr/i/iqfo
http://d.pr/i/9rqq
The demo video is in this repo.
You can also download from dropbox.
You can download the project and build it using Xcode 4.6, iOS SDK 6.1.
The usage of Documentation is pretty minimal. Just use a right swipe gesture to open the Tool Kit. There you can search, explore library, save bookmarks, and open documents to read them, just like using Xcode. But... With several minor tweaks.
You can search all types of documentations (guides, references, APIs, sample codes, etc.) in one place. No switches or filters.
Even you can't remember exactly a method name, you can get the result as long as the character you type contained in the method and the order is right.
e.g.constraintWithItem:attribute:relatedBy:toItem:attribute:multiplier:constant:
, you can type just @"constaintwiarrr" to get the result.
Search results will be sorted to let you easily identify your aiming result. And the speed is fast!
Inspired by Evernote, bookmarks in Documentation is not the traditional bookmark function. It is more like a read-it-later notebooks. We developers can save documents and put to the bookmark folder we name. What to bookmark and which folder to save is up to you. Bookmarks in Documentation is your Dev inventory.
Now the only tweak is you can adjust the font size of documents and the left, right padding.
OSX and iOS have so many beautiful and powerful app. I kind of feel like we developers deserve beautiful native developer app too.
So I try very hard to learn Design and did the UI / UX work myself. Intending to give Documentation a simple yet beautiful UI. The design has not completed too. And maybe it is not beautiful as I planned to make it be. So now if you are a designer and interest in this project. You can contact me [[email protected]]. Maybe we can co-work and bring Documentation to LIVE!
As soon as I have the time to resume this project. At least I will completed all the part mentioned above, and ship it to AppStore FREE. And when iOS 7 come out, a update must be made.(Apple changed its documentation tech a little).
I sure have some future thoughts while in development. But as I described I am just a novice iOS developer, and maybe it turns out no many people need this App. So I am not sure the future of Documentation yet.