After hiring a designer on Fiverr for CodeTrimmer icons, I try generating them locally with DiffusionBee, a free Apple silicon build of Stable Diffusion, on an M1 MacBook. I show outputs for a scissors-over-code prompt, note the permissive CreativeML Open RAIL-M license, and observe that prompt-writing is a skill, with results good enough for toy apps or as starting points for design ideas...
I give a progress update on translating an external designer’s UI into SwiftUI, covering the rounded-rectangle elements I’ve completed and the .offset modifier I used to create an overlapping layout. My remaining work includes a custom picker and a combined picker/progress indicator...
A short note on using ImageColorPicker, a browser-based tool for identifying colors in an image, while recreating a designer-provided UI in SwiftUI. The site returns RGB values out of 255, which I divide by 255 to get the CGFloat values required by SwiftUI’s Color initializer...
Frustrated with the design of my Times Table app, I hired two UX designers through Fiverr to redesign it with kids in mind. I share both drafts and give feedback on each — layout, colors, how to show right and wrong answers — and consider which elements I could realistically implement with my current iOS skills...
While building a calculator-style answer keypad for a multiplication tables practice app, I follow an iOS Academy video that recreates the iOS Calculator in SwiftUI and enjoy spotting edge cases the tutorial’s quick implementation leaves unhandled. I also reflect on copying existing Apple apps as a way to skip design work, and on wanting to improve at design over time...
My plan for a simple Easter date calculator app, sketched in GoodNotes. Users pick a year and get the date for Easter Sunday, which can be copied to the clipboard or opened in a calendar. I also raise an accessibility question about the scrolling number picker UI...
