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Ben Jakuben
Treehouse TeacherNew project! Build a Self-Destructing Message iPhone App
Hi everyone!
I am super excited to release my latest project for iOS (Android coming soon!).
In the Self-Destructing Message app we will build on the concepts learned in previous iOS projects to create an app that will allow users to send photo or video messages to other users that will be deleted once viewed. The app will be tab-based, meaning we will cover UITabBarController, and we’ll dive further into Storyboards, segues, table views, and the View Controller lifecycle. We will use the standard UIImagePickerController to capture photos or videos. Photos will be compressed and displayed in UIImage views, and videos will be limited to 10 seconds and viewed using the MPMoviePlayerController from the MediaPlayer framework. The back-end of the app will be built on Parse.com’s popular cloud storage services, which will handle user accounts and file and message storage.
Ben Jakuben
Treehouse TeacherThank you, Timm! I am so glad to hear positive reviews of the course.
I left out more advanced user querying simply because of time. One thing I could possibly do is blog about it and link to that. At some point it makes sense to just allow search for users rather than query a bunch and sort through a giant list. Another thing I thought about implementing was an infinite scroll list (like a Twitter timeline), but again, had to cut for brevity. And monetization stuff would be invaluable, I think. That's something we hope to cover in iOS and Android sooner than later.
Hopefully we can touch on this stuff here and there in subsequent projects, but do let us know here in the Forum if you want to discuss specific questions, and keep an eye on the Treehouse Blog for iOS content.
10 Answers
Marcus Tisäter
4,886 PointsGreat. I love you're android developments. I can't wait for the andrioid version to come out! Keep it up superstar!
Ben Jakuben
Treehouse TeacherHaha - thanks for the kind words! I'm very excited to work on the Android version. I'll get it out as fast as I can.
Marcus Tisäter
4,886 PointsDo you have a approximately date for the android version to be released ?
Ben Jakuben
Treehouse TeacherJust Fall 2013 at this point. I haven't even planned it out yet - I've been totally focused on iOS. As we get a feel for the date we will start to narrow the focus on our Roadmap. :)
Jack Solomon
839 PointsThanks Ben Jakuben, fantastic post! Can't wait to see the finished product. It seems Parse is becoming a big thing, and taking over all the other JSON based backends.
Ben Jakuben
Treehouse TeacherIt's truly amazing! It is so cool to work with and fits right in for how we want to teach people how to build whatever they want themselves.
Jack Solomon
839 PointsYes, I think it is the fact you can interact with all the data as if it were just a local string, but it is in fact constantly updating through a web backend. Thanks again! When will the rest of the project be finished?
Ben Jakuben
Treehouse TeacherI've coded all and written some of the last two stages, so I'd like to power through those and with some help from the rest of my team, get it up in early September. I should have a better timeline next week. It was meant to be all one project but we wanted to get the functionality part out sooner than later because it has been a while since the last iOS content was released.
Ryan Gittings
Courses Plus Student 391 PointsHey Ben! Any idea of timescale for the last two stages? Desperate to watch these videos! Haha.
Ben Jakuben
Treehouse TeacherThey are in the works! Hopefully in the next few weeks. I should have a good idea on the exact date in about a week.
Matt Campbell
9,767 PointsThis sounds awesome and seriously useful. You gotta have a Mac to dev iOS haven't you?
Ben Jakuben
Treehouse TeacherYes, pretty much. There are some unsupported things called "Hackintoshes", or even a few places where you can rent a Mac Mini to use online, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend those. I got started on iOS by borrowing a friends really old Macbook. :)
Derek Medlin
6,151 PointsI've been waiting for a tutorial of this depth for ages. It has all the minor details that I've been wanting to learn. My hat goes off to you Ben, and to all of tree house (can't wait to learn them all!) . This is truly amazing.
Ben Jakuben
Treehouse TeacherSo awesome to hear! It was really great to work on, and we had a lot of extra effort from Patrick Bell, Paige Coley, Tim Ritter, Jake Kemper, Jean-Louis Jabouin, and Fabi Castillo to get it out yesterday! Thanks, team!
Andrew Pritykin
6,574 PointsGood job Ben! Love your mobile tutorials on both iOS and Android. I personally am more focused on your Android tutorials, but good things come to those who wait. Looking forward to the android tutorial. Keep up the great work!
Ben Jakuben
Treehouse TeacherThanks Andrew! I feel lucky to work on both but look forward to getting back to Android. :)
Patrick Cooney
12,216 PointsLooking forward to digging into this one. I have one small app and a second in the works that will need to be integrated into one single app using a tab bar within the next few weeks. This couldn't have come at a better time. Thanks Treehouse!
Ben Jakuben
Treehouse TeacherWe love hearing that! Hopefully the information in the project is enough, but if not, stop back in the Forum and maybe staff or students can assist. :)
Patrick Cooney
12,216 PointsI certainly will be. There are a couple of things I want to work into my app that might be slightly tough for a n00b.
One thing I'd love to see, maybe as a quick blog post since it's probably too late to work it into the course, is how to swipe from one view to another. One of the tabs will require two screens because I simply don't have enough screen real estate to display everything that needs to display for that tab's functionality. Of course, I'll probably create it, find out it's a user experience nightmare and have to scrap it. haha.
P.S. Looking forward to rebuilding the whole thing for Androids when I'm done.
Ben Jakuben
Treehouse TeacherLove that idea! I have two blog posts in the works but will add this to my list.
Patrick Cooney
12,216 PointsAwesome, thanks! You guys are the best!
Patrick <3's Treehouse.
Constantine Antonakos
9,741 PointsAny update on the Android version? (Sorry to pester, but aspiring Android magician here :-) ).
Ben Jakuben
Treehouse TeacherI'm glad to hear the interest, so you're not pestering at all!
I'm still trying to finish up the iOS version because of some recent changes for iOS 7 (I'm about to post about that as well). So sorry for the delay on Android, but I'll be back at it full time and full speed very shortly. I will probably break the project up like the iOS version to get the functionality stages published as soon as possible.
Jason Woolard
11,563 PointsHello Ben,
Great tutorial! I have learned a lot from Team Treehouse and it has assisted me a lot in going for my degree for Bachelors in Mobile Development! I was just curious as to if the updates for iOS7 are still planned for release today or this week at all? :-) Thanks for your time.
Regards, Jason
Ben Jakuben
Treehouse TeacherIt's taken a bit longer than planned, but the 2nd project dealing with this app is now live. Check it out, and thanks for your patience! Hope you all enjoy it. :)
http://teamtreehouse.com/library/implementing-designs-for-iphone
Constantine Antonakos
9,741 PointsAwesome! Thank you so much for the update! :)
Just wondering: isn't Amit usually working on iOS projects, or did you guys just want to switch it around and work on different stuff?
Ben Jakuben
Treehouse TeacherAmit just released the refresh of Build a Simple iPhone app and coordinated the upcoming Objective-C course. He and I are back to full-time iOS and Android teaching, respectively, but I love both platforms and was thrilled to add to the iOS content here. We made the decision a while back because at the time Amit had a lot of balls in the air and we wanted to keep the iOS content being developed at full throttle since we currently have more students learning iOS than Android. I was originally going to do it all as one project but it grew to two full projects. :)
Timm Liberty
2,731 PointsTimm Liberty
2,731 PointsI've started this project and love it. There are a couple things I would love to see added, perhaps in a Deep Dive. You refer to better ways to go through a huge list of users that might become available should an app become popular, as there would be (hopefully) millions and millions of users on Parse using the app. (That's poorly worded but I think you get it, you're smart). An example and run through of a better method for listing and viewing the 'friends' would be great. Also, and this might be suitable for a completely different app, but monetizing this app using some sort of 'upgrade' offer with an in app purchase, (possibly allowing a user more than a set amount of 'receiver friends' as the in app purchase upgrade with different levels of purchases, say an included base of 5 friends, upgrade to Gold for 50 friends, or Platinum for unlimited. By the way, you're an awesome teacher.