You can also grab screenshots directly from your computer while plugged into your iPhone or iPod Touch. First, you have to download and install the iPhone SDK. Don’t worry, it’s free. You just have to have the desktop software tools that come with the SDK.

Open Xcode and open the Organizer window (from the Window menu). Plug in your iPhone or iPod Touch and in a few seconds, it should appear in the list of devices on the left. The first time you plug in your iPhone or iPod Touch you will be asked if you want to use that device for development.

Once you’ve got your device setup, just click the “Screenshot” tab in the Organizer window and you can capture screenshots from your device. You can capture literally any screenshot, including the lock screensaver, video as it’s playing, even as you’re holding a button down.

iPhone-Simulator Cropper

This tool works by capturing the screen of the simulator runnning on your system. One really slick feature is the option to create captured images in two primary formats – first, a format suitable for upload to iTunes for your application screenshots – second, capturing a screenshot that is suitable for display on a website.

The following images show the iPhone-Simulator Cropper application, as well as two sample images captured:

iTunes Connect / App Store:

Website (iPhone Device from Apple Marketing):

Using Facebook-connect for iPhone SDK to post stories to Facebook is a great feature to add to your iPhone application. But what happens if the user has no access to the network? If you don’t check the network, the answer is nothing. This leads to user confusion, and it will prevent your app from being approved for the App Store.

So, how do you check? Apple provided a sample application called Reachability which provides the answer. I’ll demonstrate here. In several blog posts people felt that the Reachability sample was overkill for their needs. If you agree, here’s a link to a recipe from The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook that provides an alternate solution. Even if you don’t plan on using it, I recommend reading through the code in the Reachability example.

Project Setup

In an earlier post I used the Facebook-Connect for iPhone SDK to post stories to Facebook. I’ll use the same project to demonstrate how to check that Facebook is reachable. Here’s the project with the API Keys and Template Bundle IDs removed. fbconnect-iphone.zip I’ll include a link to the final project at the end.

Download the Reachability project too. I’ll be importing a class from it to check the network connection status.

Adding the SystemConfiguration Framework

The reachability class uses the SystemConiguration Framework to check network reachability. Adding the framework to the project is easy.

1. Open Connect.xcodeproj if you haven’t already.
2. In the Groups & Files area, control click on the Frameworks folder and select Add => Existing Frameworks.
3. Look in the Frameworks folder for the SystemConfiguration.framework folder and select it.
4. Click Add to add the framework to your project.

Add the Reachability Class

Now add the Reachability Class from Apple’s sample.

1. Control click on the Source folder in the project and select Add => Existing Files.
2. Navigate to the Reachability project, click Classes, and select the files: Reachability.h and Reachability.m.
3. Click Add, then select Copy items into destination group’s folder (if needed)
4. Click Add again.

Using the Reachability Class

Now that the framework and class have been added to the project, put them to work in the code. Create a variable to track the internet connection status, and two methods in the SessionViewController.h file.

1. Open the SessionViewController.h file and import the Reachability class:

   #import "Reachability.h"

2. Add a variable to track the status:

   NetworkStatus internetConnectionStatus;

3. Add a property to hold the network status:

   @property NetworkStatus internetConnectionStatus;

4. Add these two methods:

   - (void)reachabilityChanged:(NSNotification *)note;
   - (void)updateStatus;

At this point, the SessionViewController interface should look like this:

#import "FBConnect/FBConnect.h"
#import "PermissionStatus.h"
#import "Reachability.h" 

@class FBSession;

@interface SessionViewController : UIViewController
    <FBDialogDelegate, FBSessionDelegate, FBRequestDelegate, PermissionStatusDelegate> {
        IBOutlet UILabel* _label;
        IBOutlet UIButton* _permissionButton;
        IBOutlet UIButton* _feedButton;
        IBOutlet FBLoginButton* _loginButton;
        FBSession* _session;
        PermissionStatus *permissionStatusForUser;
        NetworkStatus internetConnectionStatus;
}

@property(nonatomic,readonly) UILabel* label;
@property (nonatomic, retain) PermissionStatus *permissionStatusForUser;
@property NetworkStatus internetConnectionStatus;

- (void)askPermission:(id)target;
- (void)publishFeed:(id)target;
- (void)reachabilityChanged:(NSNotification *)note;
- (void)updateStatus;

@end

Finally, the implementation.

1. Open SessionViewController.m.
2. Sysnthesize the internetConnectionStatus variable:

   @synthesize internetConnectionStatus;

3. Define a string for the host name of the resource:

   #define kHostName @"www.facebook.com"

4. Make the viewDidLoad method look like this:

   - (void)viewDidLoad {
       //Use the Reachability class to determine if the internet can be reached.
       [[Reachability sharedReachability] setHostName:kHostName];
       //Set Reachability class to notifiy app when the network status changes.
       [[Reachability sharedReachability] setNetworkStatusNotificationsEnabled:YES];
       //Set a method to be called when a notification is sent.
       [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(reachabilityChanged:) name:@"kNetworkReachabilityChangedNotification" object:nil];
           [self updateStatus];
       [_session resume];
       _loginButton.style = FBLoginButtonStyleWide;
   }

   I want to receive notifications if the network status changes, so I used the setNetworkStatusNotificationsEnabled:YES method. However, I found that the reachabilityChanged method wasn’t called when the network status changed. I’ll refactor later to fix the problem.

5. Implement the new methods:

   - (void)reachabilityChanged:(NSNotification *)note {
       [self updateStatus];
   }
   
   - (void)updateStatus
   {
       // Query the SystemConfiguration framework for the state of the device's network connections.
       self.internetConnectionStatus    = [[Reachability sharedReachability] internetConnectionStatus];
       if (self.internetConnectionStatus == NotReachable) {
           //show an alert to let the user know that they can't connect...
           UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Network Status" message:@"Sorry, our network guro determined that the network is not available. Please try again later." delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:nil otherButtonTitles:@"OK", nil];
           [alert show];
       }  else {
           // If the network is reachable, make sure the login button is enabled.
           _loginButton.enabled = YES;
       }
   }

   To update the user of the status, I display an alert with a message. When status notifications are sent later, either enable the login button or display the alert.

6. Add the alert delegate method:

   #pragma mark AlertView delegate methods
   - (void)alertView:(UIAlertView *)alertView clickedButtonAtIndex:(NSInteger)buttonIndex {
       _loginButton.enabled = NO;
       [alertView release];
   }

   If the network isn’t available, disable the loginButton. In this app nothing can be done without a connection, so additional information would be in order.

To test the application on the simulator, go to Network Preferences and disable your network connections. While disabled, the alert will be displayed. To test on an iPhone, put the device in Airplane mode. On an iPod, turn off the WiFi connection. I also tested on my device by walking to places where there is no Edge or WiFi network. In my tests, the reachabilityChanged method did not get called. Thanks to Shashi Prabhakar for giving me a clue about how to get it working, see his comment below.

Refactoring to Receive Reachability Changed Notifications

To get the change notifications I had to make several small changes. My initial observations when checking the remoteHostStatus instead of the internetConnectionStatus:

1. The reachabilityChanged method was being called.
2. I noticed that when first initialized the remoteHostStatus is always NotReachable.
3. The internetConnectionStatus returns a positive result before the remoteHostStatus.
4. Because I am using an alert, sometimes the alert would be displayed twice or not at all when using one status or the other.

As a result, I changed the code to track both the remoteHostStatus and the internetConnectionStatus. I also added a method to initialize the variables.

1. Open SessionViewController.h and add a variable and property to hold the remoteHostStatus.

   NetworkStatus remoteHostStatus;

2. Also add a method to initialize the variables.

   - (void)initStatus;

Here’s the complete interface.

#import "FBConnect/FBConnect.h"
#import "PermissionStatus.h"
#import "Reachability.h" 

@class FBSession;

@interface SessionViewController : UIViewController
    <FBDialogDelegate, FBSessionDelegate, FBRequestDelegate, PermissionStatusDelegate> {
        IBOutlet UILabel* _label;
        IBOutlet UIButton* _permissionButton;
        IBOutlet UIButton* _feedButton;
        IBOutlet FBLoginButton* _loginButton;
        FBSession* _session;
        PermissionStatus *permissionStatusForUser;
        NetworkStatus internetConnectionStatus;
        NetworkStatus remoteHostStatus;
}

@property(nonatomic,readonly) UILabel* label;
@property (nonatomic, retain) PermissionStatus *permissionStatusForUser;
@property NetworkStatus internetConnectionStatus;
@property NetworkStatus remoteHostStatus;

- (void)askPermission:(id)target;
- (void)publishFeed:(id)target;
- (void)reachabilityChanged:(NSNotification *)note;
- (void)updateStatus;
- (void)initStatus;

@end

Edit the implementation.

1. Open SessionViewController.m and add the initStatus method

   -(void)initStatus {
       self.remoteHostStatus = [[Reachability sharedReachability] remoteHostStatus];
       self.internetConnectionStatus    = [[Reachability sharedReachability] internetConnectionStatus];
   }

2. Change the viewDidLoad method to call the initStatus method instead of the updateStatus method.

   - (void)viewDidLoad {
       //Use the Reachability class to determine if the internet can be reached.
       [[Reachability sharedReachability] setHostName:kHostName];
       //Set Reachability class to notifiy app when the network status changes.
       [[Reachability sharedReachability] setNetworkStatusNotificationsEnabled:YES];
       //Set a method to be called when a notification is sent.
       [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(reachabilityChanged:) name:@"kNetworkReachabilityChangedNotification" object:nil];
       [self initStatus];
       [_session resume];
       _loginButton.style = FBLoginButtonStyleWide;
   }

3. Change the updateStatus method to check both variables.

   - (void)updateStatus
   {
       // Query the SystemConfiguration framework for the state of the device's network connections.
       self.remoteHostStatus = [[Reachability sharedReachability] remoteHostStatus];
       self.internetConnectionStatus    = [[Reachability sharedReachability] internetConnectionStatus];
       NSLog(@"remote status = %d, internet status = %d", self.remoteHostStatus, self.internetConnectionStatus);
       if (self.internetConnectionStatus == NotReachable && self.remoteHostStatus == NotReachable) {
           //show an alert to let the user know that they can't connect...
           UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Network Status" message:@"Sorry, our network guro determined that the network is not available. Please try again later." delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:nil otherButtonTitles:@"OK", nil];
           [alert show];
       } else {
           // If the network is reachable, make sure the login button is enabled.
           _loginButton.enabled = YES;
       }
   }

I left the log statement so that you could see how the values change as the network settings are changed. In the simulator, go to network settings and disable your connections while it is running. The reachabilityChanged method is now being called as the network status changes.

Here’s the original sample project without the API Keys and Template Bundle IDs. fbconnect-iphone-reachable.zip

And the refactored sample project. fbconnect-iphone-reachable-2.zip

In this week’s Macnifying OS X, I’m going to show you how easy it is to share files on your Mac so that it appears on Windows computers automatically.

In System Preferences, go to ‘Sharing’ and check the box for ‘File Sharing’. By default, only your Public Folder will be shared. If you want to add other folders to the shared list, click on the ‘+’ sign under the Shared Folder box and choose the folders you wish to share.

After you’re done selecting, you’ll need to set the Permissions for each shared folder. Generally, you should allow Read Only rights to avoid others from messing around with your files. As you can see from the screenshot below, I removed the group labelled ‘Users’ from the users list so only ‘Everyone’ and I appear on the list. I do this to make things easier, only to allow guests logins from other computers.

Next, click on ‘Options’ and on the resulting window, check the box that says “Share files and folders using SMB” and hit ‘Done’.

Now, you’ll need to add your Mac into a Microsoft workgroup. To do this, click ‘Show All’ at the top of the System Preferences windows and click on ‘Network’. Select your active connection and click ‘Advanced’.

In the window which pops up, click on the ‘WINS’ tab and enter a workgroup in the appropriate field. Microsoft has two workgroups: MSHOME and WORKGROUP. Find out which workgroup the majority of your Windows computers belong to and set the workgroup to that.

Click on ‘OK’ and you’ll return to Network preferences, now hit ‘Apply’. Now you’re halfway there – the rest of the work is performed on the Windows machines.

On your Windows desktop, right-click on ‘My Computer’ and select Properties. Click on the ‘Computer Name’ tab and make sure that your workgroup is the same as the one set on your Mac. If it isn’t then click on ‘Change’, set it and restart your computer.

Once that is done, double-click on ‘My Network Places’ and voila, all of your Mac’s shared folders should be visible. Take note that the Drop Box in your Mac’s Public folder won’t be accessible. If you want to use the Drop Box to let other users “drop” their files onto your Mac, you’ll need to change its permissions.

On your Mac’s Home folder, double-click the Public folder. Right-click on Drop Box and choose ‘Get Info’. Click on the lock icon on the bottom right hand corner of the Info window and enter your account password. Then set the permission for Everyone to Read & Write hence, allowing anyone to conveniently “drop” files onto your Mac.

Did you find this tutorial easy to follow? Did it work for you? Is there an easier way to share files between Mac and Windows computers?

Apart from it there are many more interesting commands to take the screenshot, let’s see below…

1. To select the area and then take the screenshot give following command
“Command button +Shift+4″
2. Press “Command+Shift+4+space” if you wanted to take the screenshot of complete window.

Foregoing commands will save the screenshot at desktop. You can also save the screenshots in to clipboard. To do that you have to press one more button “Control” with the given commands. for example …
Use “Command+ control+ Shift+ 3″ instead of simple
“Command button +Shift+3″ command.

Apart from it mac os provide a software called “Grab” to capture the images in different styles. You can find this software in : Applications->utilities->Grab

    typedef enum {
        UIKeyboardTypeDefault,
        UIKeyboardTypeASCIICapable,
        UIKeyboardTypeNumbersAndPunctuation,
        UIKeyboardTypeURL,
        UIKeyboardTypeNumberPad,
        UIKeyboardTypePhonePad,
        UIKeyboardTypeNamePhonePad,
        UIKeyboardTypeEmailAddress,
        UIKeyboardTypeAlphabet = UIKeyboardTypeASCIICapable
    } UIKeyboardType;

Good grief. Seven distinct keyboard types? Bah. (Yes, 9 appear in the list, but UIKeyboardTypeDefault and UIKeyboardTypeAlphabet are just aliases for other types. Quiet you.) Some choices were obvious — my email address field will probably use UIKeyboardTypeEmailAddress, for instance — but some other choices are kind of head-scratchers. One of the fields wants a quantity, for example. Which keyboard should I use for that bad boy? UIKeyboardTypeNumberPad? But what if I need units, like “cups”? Can I get an alphabetic keyboard from UIKeyboardTypeNumberPad? I didn’t know, and tragically neither does Google; there aren’t any good breakdowns of iPhone keyboard types on the first few pages. Hitting up some blogs finally pointed me to some more Apple documentation, but even that still didn’t answer all my questions.

After not finding what I need, I did what any good developer would do: put down what I was supposed to be doing, and pick up something more interesting. I slapped together a quick iPhone app to display each keyboard type through a table view, the source for which is attached, and used it to scribble down a quick reference, which follows forthwith:
Overview

This rundown contains images of all keyboard views for all keyboard types. Each keyboard is configured exactly the same with respect to things like which “Return” button they use, so any difference you see is due purely to differences in the keyboards themselves, and not their configuration. Bearing this in mind, it turns out there are only two real keyboard layout types: the “normal” alphabet keyboard layout, and the number pad layout:
normal alphabet keyboard layout number pad keyboard layout

The first thing to realize is that even though it looks like there are seven different keyboards, there really aren’t. There are really just 2 different keyboard layouts with different keys stuck on them, and the layouts are strung together in different ways. (The alphabet keyboard does have a couple varieties with more or fewer keys, but they’re really just variations on a theme.) The particularly observant reader (or maybe just the ones who are breathing, it is blue after all) will notice one particular difference between these keyboard layouts: the “Done” button. We’ll chat more about that in a bit.
UIKeyboardTypeASCIICapable and Friend

This keyboard has three different views: alphabet, punctuation and numbers, and punctuation and symbols.
normal alphabet keyboard layout alphabet keyboard layout with numbers and punctuation alphabet keyboard layout with symbols

You alternate between the three views by pushing the “ABC,” “123,” and “#+=” buttons on each view, which is as intuitive as we’ve come to expect from Apple. This keyboard has a total of 98 characters (26 lowercase + 26 uppercase + 1 spacebar + 10 numbers + 35 punctuation), so “ASCII capable” is a great name for this keyboard, and it should serve almost any enter-text-onto-your-iPhone need that you have. (And between you and me, if you push and hold some characters, you get a list of other characters to enter, so you can actually type a lot more than 98 characters on this keyboard, just less conveniently. I should note that this tap-and-hold input method works on all keyboards, not just UIKeyboardTypeASCIICapable.)
tap-and-hold diacritic example

The next keyboard type in the list, UIKeyboardTypeNumbersAndPunctuation, is exactly the same as this keyboard, it just opens on the second (numbers) view instead of the first (alphabet) view.

As a rule, this keyboard type should be your bread-and-butter keyboard. If you don’t know which keyboard to use, use this guy; he won’t let you down. There’s nothing text-wise you can do with an on-screen iPhone keyboard you can’t do with UIKeyboardTypeASCIICapable. (If your input is number-oriented as opposed to alphabet-oriented, though, you should probably use UIKeyboardTypeNumbersAndPunctuation.)

The only real drawback to this keyboard is that it’s clunky, with three screens to navigate, doesn’t provide any really input sanitization, so your user can enter almost any character he can think of, even if it doesn’t make sense in the context of the input. What keyboard should you use to provide input-level sanitization? Like sanitization for a URL, for example?
UIKeyboardTypeURL

I’m glad you asked! UIKeyboardTypeURL is designed specifically for the purpose of inputting the most common URLs quickly and efficiently:
URL alphabet keyboard layout URL number and punctuation keyboard layout URL number and symbol keyboard layout

This keyboard is basically the UIKeyboardTypeASCIICapable keyboard with the non-URL keys removed, and the spacebar replaced with some URL-handy keys. This keyboard is ideal for entering web addresses, like http://www.sigpwned.com/. Otherwise, not much else to say here. The take-home message is just that input sanitization is A Good Thing, and you should think about it, and this keyboard offers great sanitization for URLs. (But you probably knew that from the name.)
UIKeyboardTypeEmailAddress

If an email address and the UIKeyboardTypeURL somehow got together, the UIKeyboardTypeEmailAddress would be the love child from that unholy union:
email alphabet keyboard layout email number and punctuation keyboard layout email number and symbol keyboard layout

This has exactly the same layout as UIKeyboardTypeURL, but has a few keys swapped around to suit email addresses. The only surprise here is the “space” key; evidently spaces are allowed in email addresses, but you have to quote them. Who know? Otherwise, nothing to see here. Move along.
UIKeyboardTypeNumberPad

Here’s where things start to shake up a little bit. Behold our first number pad keyboard:
numberpad keyboard

As you can see, this layout is quite different from the others. The most important difference, though, lies in this keyboard’s lack of a Done key. The Done key is the key you use to dismiss the keyboard when you’re done editing, so knowing its location is kind of important. (Without a Done key, there’s no way for the user to dismiss the keyboard, so it just sits there.) This is one of the few places where Apple has violated the “Principle of Least Surprise” by not putting the Done key in the same place it appears on other keyboards. On “doneless” keyboards like these, most developers put a Done key on the navigation bar at the top, as I did:
numberpad done key example

As I’m sure you surmised from the title, this keyboard is specifically for numbers-only input, which is perhaps less useful than you might expect. That’s why UIKeyboardTypeNumberPad brought some friends along.
UIKeyboardTypePhonePad

This keyboard is just an on-screen implementation of a conventional touch-tone phone pad. You’ll have to use the same Done key trick from above.
phone pad number layout phone pad symbol layout

This keyboard brings along the symbol characters you need for some phone numbers, which is important. Unfortunately, however, I’ve now officially run out of witty transitions. So it’s a good thing you won’t remember, because these are not the droids you’re looking for. :: waves hand ::
UIKeyboardTypeNamePhonePad

Ah, UIKeyboardTypeNamePhonePad. Of all the many, many keyboards the iPhone supports, I find this one the most confusing. It supports numbers, letters, and spaces only, with no punctuation or symbols whatsoever. (And lowercase letters only at that because the shift key is disabled!) Very strange:
name phone pad alphabet layout name phone pad numbers layout

But mine is not to question why. Mine is just… no, actually mine is to question why. WTF Apple? Seriously, I can’t even get uppercase letters on this keyboard? Odd. There is one bit of good news about this particular keyboard, though: it has both a number pad and a Done button, so you can have a number pad without having to do a bunch of navigation-bar-done-button gymnastics. At least as long as you don’t mind using a kind of gimpy keyboard, anyway.
Keyboard App Source Code

Attached to this post you’ll find a file called “iPhone Keyboard App.src.zip”. Inside you’ll find all the NIBs, source code, graphic resources, etc. for the iPhone app I used to build this post. I made it pretty quick, but I think it’s pretty clean, so hopefully it’ll be useful to someone somewhere. At the very least it should serve as a good example of how to work with the Done key on the physical keyboard via UITextFieldDelegate and textFieldShouldReturn: versus on the Navigation bar using self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem and UIBarButtonItem. If anyone really wants to see it, I’d be happy to write a post about the architecture of the program and how it works at a high level.
Underview

And that’s that! You’re now an expert on iPhone keyboards. Or at least what they look like. Hopefully this will help people understand the core iPhone input method better and plan around what keyboard is best to use. Remember, the most restrictive keyboard you can use is the one you should use.