assets

Asset Catalogs: Love Em or Leave Em?

October 31, 2013 John Blanco iPhone, Mobile

I’ve never been to a WWDC, but each year I get positively gitty when the session videos become available. And what do I get the most excited about? No, not Passbook, iCloud, or the big-ticket stuff. No, I like the small stuff. The simple stuff. The stuff that improves my day-to-day and fixes things I constantly find annoying.

This year, that something was Asset Catalogs.

Why Asset Catalogs? Well, simple. Ever since we got the iPhone 4 in all it’s retina glory, I’ve always found it frustrating to manage keeping TWO versions of every graphic. (The original and it’s double-resolution version.) There’s so much monotony in it:

1. I need to keep all the files paired together in Xcode, in the right order. (Partly due to OCD, partly due to basic organization.)
2. I need to make sure they’re both named EXACTLY the same.
3. If I want to rename an image, I GOTTA DO IT TWICE.
4. I hate how much space it takes up on the Project Navigator when the folders inevitably all expand.
5. I need to make sure the @2x is exactly twice the dimensions of the original. (Designers always flub this.)

Sadly, Asset Catalogs don’t fix #5, but they do help us a ton with the other four, and hey, that ain’t bad! Still, not all is rosy in a catalogued world, so let’s take a look, shall we?

asset catalogs, assets, xcode