This Week in Mobile: Custom Fonts and Smoother Scrolling

Last week we got new capabilities in TestFlight from Apple, with multiple build support and better test management. And with a notice from Apple that iTunes Connect will be unavailable for up to eight hours on April 22nd, maybe there are more updates on the way!

iOS 

Mock objects are a great way of making robust test cases. Find out how to make mock objects more useful in this talk from Jon Reid. 

Greg Heo’s talk from last year’s Swift Summit on How to Write Better Code is well worth watching if you want to improve your craft. 

There’s nothing worse than having your app stall while scrolling through a list. See how you can Boost Smooth Scrolling with iOS 10’s Pre-Fetching API. 

Core Data can be a little awkward to work with at times, but once you get it, you get it! Here’s how to Create the Core Data Stack with Backward Compatibility in Swift. 

Analyzing Third Party Libraries might make you think twice about using libraries in your code. Of course, there’s always a balance.

Having said that, here are some projects to check out: 

• MBIcons: Contains over 200 icons that can be resized to any dimension, drawn using NSBezierPath.
• YetAnotherAnimationLibrary: Designed for gesture-driven animations. Fast, simple & extensible! 
• UIFontComplete: Make working with UIFont faster and less error-prone.
• Haptica: Easy haptic feedback generator.
• YNSearch: Awesome fully customizable search view like Pinterest written in Swift 3.

Android

Android O brings better font support, most importantly making it much easier to use custom fonts with your app. 

If you’ve ever written an Android app, you’ve used Context, but using it incorrectly can lead to memory leaks. It’s worth reading Understanding Context in Android Applications to avoid this. 

Squeezing Performance from SQLite: Insertions takes you through some examples of adding large amounts of database and making it as fast as possible.

Accessibility can sometimes be an afterthought in apps. Learn from the team at LinkedIn Create Accessible Android Products.

Want to become a more advanced Kotlin programmer? In this video, Jake Wharton brings us through 10 lesser known tricks in Kotlin.

Some projects to check out: 

• MaterialChipsInput: Implementation of a Material Design Chips component.
• expanding-collection-android: A card peek/pop controller.
• litho: A declarative framework for building efficient UIs on Android, from Facebook.
• UltraViewPager: An extension for ViewPager to provide multiple features in a single ViewPager.

General 

The Power of Defaults shows how the pre-population of some fields in your app can make life so much easier for your customers.

Life can be tough for designers, working with people who don’t really appreciate UX. After reading When Design Feels Like an Uphill Battle, go and give your designer(s) a hug. 

Stripe has released a new quarterly digital magazine called Increment, focusing on a central theme each issue. Spring covers best practices around on-call and incident response.