A Basic intro of SwiftUI & its significance
Apple’s SwiftUI is the latest debutant in the wide stretched dimensions of technologies involved in coding and UI designing for delightful user experience. Along with Homekit, macOS, & tvOS, the arrival of the newest framework is a hot topic of discussion among tech geeks who’re eager to use this tool compiled with open source programming language macOS, iOS, tvOS, Watch OS, & other major platforms. Swift was introduced as a substitute to Objective-C at first with a myriad of robust, expressive, & significant add-ons making it as easier to learn as Python. Although Apple’s attempt to simplify UI customization is appreciable, it prioritizes macOS and iOS APIs that are not intuitive at all.
SwiftUI came as a rescue for developers who aim to build compelling UI elements with the integration of simple yet impressive declarative syntax. Now it is possible to skip the process of writing mountains of codes using this prevalent framework. Since the moment when Apple’s Software developer, Jost Shaffer announced that an iPhone app can be made in just six lines of codes, the brand new UI framework has been gathering attention with developers who intend to grab Xcode interactive development experience.
What’s new to look at SwiftUI framework?
A stack of new tools & APIs is being introduced for crafting interactive user interfaces with SwiftUI. This programming language is compiled with an open-source framework sets new parameters for efficient iPhone app development for varied iOS-powered devices. It comes up with a simple declarative syntax that brings down the complexity of writing & understanding the bundles of codes for UI development.
SwiftUI acts as a doorway to create engaging interfaces for all Apple platforms with a set of tools & APIs. The framework runs smoothly with Xcode design tools to stay in sync with the coding and designing process. Coming to the capabilities of SwiftUI, it surpasses other frameworks in terms of localization, accessibility, & dynamic type. It is based on Swift language itself and available in the Xcode 11 beta IDE. Now hold your breath to know some noteworthy features of SwiftUI framework:
- It works on a declarative syntax to mention the expected functionalities of a user interface design. Just like specifying the list of elements required to be leveraged with app’s UI along with a clear understanding of alignment, font, text fields, & colour for every field.
- All concepts of animation & other integrations are being involved in UI development are taken into account of SwiftUI’s declarative styles. In this way, developers hold the control to add animation up to any extent and apply ready-to-use effects without indulging in the tasks of writing a long chain of codes. In such a scenario, the system monitors each & every aspect of maintaining the stability of an app with maximum focus on eliminating the probable interruptions in its performance.
- SwiftUI lets iPhone app developers use design tools using Xcode 11 with the flexibility to use drag-and-drop options for building UI. All the changes reflect on the preview panel once a developer begins typing. Xcode allows recompilation of the changes and combines them together to accelerate the running process of an app.
- Developers enjoy the advantage of the framework that allows them to build one or more previews to determine sample data and get an idea of configuring capabilities of an app in terms of interacting users with integration of large fonts, localization, Dark Mode, a colour theme defined for iOS13, & more.
- One can make use of SwiftUI by integrating its add-ons from a pack of UIKit & AppKit or WatchKit frameworks to render platform-specific functionality.
Some more statistics to convey the idea behind SwiftUI framework
In the midst of UI designing & development, iOS app developers must be considering new Xcode for aforesaid features for library views in a left-side drawer for drag & drop set up on the app screen. This significantly simplifies the adjustment of custom-tailored inspectors or the conversion of codes into a scalable list. The words by Senior Vice President of software engineering at Apple, Craig Federighi onstage define that SwiftUI is compatible on all iOS platforms and it offers bindings to all the native controls to customize experiences for a common API.
Swift was introduced in 2014 and its open-source version rolled out in 2015. It uses Objective-C runtime library & runs in Xcode with Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks. As defined in the intro section, Swift is a successor of Objective-C while SwiftUI is a supplants it. Apple also launched Swift Playgrounds in 2016, an interactive learning app with puzzles, challenges, & lessons for newbies to let them learn the ins & outs of coding. The recent update came with a sharing feature that enables users to share their creations in order to extend their support to IBM’s TJBot, Augmented Reality lessons, tutorials, & more.
Though it offers support to multifarious OS-level features such as dark mode, there is no doubt that SwiftUI is the next technology to empower iOS apps. Now it is quite obvious to say that the prime intent behind the creation of SwiftUI is more focused on boosting the productivity of the iOS app developers.
Wrapping it up!
Over 450,000 apps have been developed using Swift with the addition of more than 350,000 in the previous year. Apple’s CEO also mentioned that Swift is one of the most preferred programming languages holding the ever-extending user base. Meanwhile, the updated version of Swift Playground is still in the limelight at one end, Swift 5 came up to share source compatibility with Swift 4, Swift 4.1, Swift 4.2, & Xcode10.2. Can’t wait to instigate SwiftUI for iOS app development? Get the updated version of the Swift Programming language that has been uploaded on Swift.org. Nothing is predictable in the world of technologies and one has to be ready to adapt every change for more benefits.
Author Bio
The above blog post is written by Pranay Agarwal, a technical lead at MobileCoderz. He holds profound knowledge of technologies & tools involved in mobile app development & UI designing.
