From the Forum — Issue #75

05 June 2015

From the Forum — Issue #75

Welcome to the latest installment of From the Forum. In this series, guest blogger Alex Jackson highlights outstanding threads from the Corona Forum. The goal is to bring attention to the most captivating, interesting, and thought-provoking discussions taking place in our very own backyard.

Please visit the forum to join these conversations or start your own!

1. Check the connection before you fall flat

We’re doing the quick hits this week on “From the Forum”, and first up is a tip for all you developers that are downloading assets over the internet. You want those audio files, graphics and new data to be updated in your app, easy as pie. Corona has you covered there, but it’s always a good idea to create the elegant error message.

The post below has a snippet that shows how to detect a working mobile internet connection and allows you to capture it and alert the user that all of the awesome content you want to deliver isn’t going to get downloaded right then. Check out the original thread to give it a spin!

https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/57174-no-internet-access-android-devices/

2. Capital A to Capital Z

Textfields and user interactivity has been and will continue to be a hot-button issue (no pun intended) amongst Corona SDK developers. It’s come a long way from what it was, and getting native textfield handling has been improving with every daily build.

However, some features that developers are looking for, aren’t built in right out of the box. Sometimes, you have to roll your own. Below is an example of this, with a Corona developer looking for a way to check the case of the text being entered into the textfield itself. Another developer chimes in with a quick way to get parsed text for you to work with. Head on down to check it out.

https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/57181-is-there-a-way-to-tell-if-the-data-a-user-types-into-a-nativenewtextfield-is-lowercase-or-capital/

3. Where exactly did you say you were again?

If you’re anything like me, you get lost going around the corner. I normally have my GPS on constantly, with no concern for battery life. It helps me get where I need to go, and everybody is happier as a result

Some folks, they can get from point A to point B without having their heads buried in their phones. With this amazing skill, they don’t need to have their GPS on all of the time. In another short tip here, we come upon a situation where a developer wanted to check for folks like these, and detect when a GPS needs to be activated for functionality in their app. What followed was an interesting discussion on GPS module theory and how it relates to your app architecture. I found it enlightening, and I hope you do too!

https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/57011-can-we-ask-the-gps-to-be-enabled/

About Alex

Alex Jackson is an indie developer and the founder of Panc Interactive, specializing in retro-style gaming. He has created several mobile applications, enjoys long walks on the beach, pixel art, and reading the Corona forums. Contact him by email or follow him on Twitter: @pancinteractive. Check out his new game Crosstown Smash on iOS, Android, and Amazon devices.