Applying contrasting background for titles is considered to be one of the latest tendencies in web design. See example below:



At first sight this task seems to be quite easy, however it may be difficult to realize it. Using «add padding» option you will begin to experience certain difficulties. The point is that padding is added to beginning and the end of text only. So, all line breaks will be ignored.

Once upon a time this task was almost solved by Yuriy Artyukh. The method was based on adding border to a child element. Nevertheless, the work hasn’t been 100% completed. There was no padding at the end of the first string (the place, where words are carried to) anyway. Other solutions I was sent via Twitter had the same problem. Line breaks had not been specified correctly.

So, how to do this?

If you see a plus (+) sign next to or below an app in the iTunes App Store, it indicates that app is universal – designed to work natively on both the iPhone and iPad.

Typically these universal apps are provided by developers when the functionality is similar on both iPad and iPhone, but due to the iPad’s large screen a different interface is needed (to include sidebars, popovers, and wide views instead of deep levels).

It also means you only have to download and pay for the app one time.

Yes, you can run almost any iPhone app on the iPad if you’re okay with pixel doubling which creates boxing or pixilated graphics. However these universal apps ensure you get the best user interface – and user experience – possible on all current iOS devices.

If you have an iPhone or iPod touch and an iPad, and you see the + sign for a universal app, you’re good to go.

Net-Craft.com develops apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. If you are looking for an app developer and would like to speak with us about your app project, please contact us by clicking here.

Several days ago we had a task to port a small iPhone app to the iPad. At the outset, the process seems pretty straightforward. However, as we got into the process we discovered this was not so. Through our efforts to make the app work on the iPad we discovered several iPhone and iPad programming techniques we would like to share. This article covers basic iPhone to iPad porting techniques and also we have supplemented it with our own practical recommendations and additional helpful remarks.

Tip 1 – nib-files

Follow Apples advice and begin porting your application with «Upgrade Current Target for iPad» menu item. It is easily found in the context menu (use right-click button of your mouse) of the current Target in XCode. Thus, all your nib-files of user interface will be duplicated in «Resources-iPad» folder and «-iPad» postfix will be added to the name of each file.

The next step is to process of your newly-created files. They should look pretty good on the spacious XGA display of Apples plane table computer. Here, you have two options at this stage. The first one is to open each nib-file in «Interface Builder» and select «Create iPad Version» item in the «File» menu. Using this method we always achieve the desired results. Nevertheless, there is another approach. You can also specify the attributes in each of nib-files using the way shown in the picture: