“Preparing for Disaster” plus 1 more - Speckyboy Design Magazine Feed

Posted: 06 Apr 2012 12:21 AM PDT

Imagine waking up one morning, booting up your system and realizing that your hard drive is dead. Or maybe you returned from vacation to see that your office has been flooded.

These scenarios would be difficult for anyone. But, for a freelance designer, it could put you out of business. That’s why you need to be prepared for the worst. Having an emergency plan in place is vital for any business. When your business lives on a single computer, your livelihood is at stake.

Here are some tips to help you avoid a potential disaster:

Back-Up Your Files On-Site and Off

This may seem obvious, but it amazes me how many people still don’t back up their work on a regular basis. With the plethora of back up utilities that are around (I prefer the free tool SyncBackSE), there’s no excuse not to keep your archive current. Windows 7 users even have a utility built in to the OS. Use it to schedule a back up to an external hard drive or USB flash drive each day after you’re done with work.

Image Source: Acronym of B2D – Backup to via Shutterstock

You should also consider backing up files online as well. That way, you have a second layer of protection if there is a hardware failure or natural disaster. I’ve been a happy user of Mozy for several years, but services like Carbonite and Dropbox are also quite affordable and popular. You can then download any lost files to your system. They even allow you to access your files from a mobile device.

What to Back-Up

Image Source: Filing cabinet with folders via Shutterstock

Of course you’ll want to back up the core files of your websites. But don’t forget about these important files:

List of FTP Sites
This one can save you a lot of headaches. Your FTP client may have a way to directly create a back up from within the program, or you may need to look in the program’s folder on your computer. Either way, make sure to keep this list current. The same thing goes for all of your CMS logins.

Graphics
It’s not only important to back up the graphic files that are directly used on your website, but it’s also worthwhile to back up your layered PSD files, Fireworks files, etc. Odds are, you’ll need them again in the future.

Photoshop Filters, Brushes, Actions, Custom Shapes
They are resources that help you express your creativity. Spending hours trying to find lost ones online isn’t quite as helpful. Back them up!

Fonts
Ever open up a file in Photoshop and discover that the original font you used is missing? Make sure to keep an archive of all the fonts on your system.

Contracts and Proposals
This one got me last year when my PC’s motherboard and hard drive failed. I lost a lot of important documents. Now, they’re backed up daily.

Email
While lots of people are using services like Gmail to store messages online, some are still using standalone email clients with old fashioned POP accounts. If you’re in that group, backing up your email is a good idea.

Financial/Billing Data
I use QuickBooks to keep track of my billing. It features a setting that will allow you to back up your data each time you close out of the program. Whatever system you use to keep track of finances, this one’s very important. You don’t want to have to try and figure out how much money your clients owe you.

Apps & Utilities
Since we often purchase our software online, we may not have that "hard copy" on a disc. Keep an archive of important software and their serial numbers. If you do happen to have some important software on disc, it’s a good idea to invest in a fire-resistant (and waterproof) safe.

In Conclusion

It’s easy to say "I’ll get to this another day". Take some advice from someone who has lost pretty much all of the items above at one time or another. Spend an hour or two now to set up a back up schedule. Make sure all of your important files are included.

If and when a hardware failure or other disaster strikes, you’ll be glad that you were prepared for the situation.

Have any other ideas on preparing for a disaster? Please feel free to share them below!

Brief Introduction

Property lists are also known as plists because of their unique file extension. If you create a new Xcode project and open the “Supporting Files” group you should find a .plist info file with the same name as your project. This stores general app information such as the icon and bundle identifier.

Let’s first create a new property list that we can play around with. Right click on the Supporting Files group and select New File…

Xcode 4.2 screen - new file template from iOS property list

This brings up a dialog box with dozens of options. Regardless of iOS or Mac OS X select the “Resource” section and choose Property List from the available options. Give it a name and Xcode will automatically create this new file and save it into your application folder. Now we have a great place to start!

Adding Some Data

You’ll recognize this is a totally blank file that has been created. So let’s get started adding a few rows into our document. If you double-click on the .plist file in your Project Navigator(left-hand column files viewer) this will open it into a new window. I find this is a bit easier to work with since the Xcode app can take up a lot of screen real estate.

Now simply right-click or control+click anywhere in the blank document and select Add Row. This creates our first XML entry with the key “New item”. Each item in our document is based upon a key => value pairing. This first row we’ve just created is known as our root item.

But you should notice that each row is also setup with a specific data type. There are two core types – containers and static row data. Containers are split between Dictionaries and Arrays and will always contain child rows(the plist document root holds either dictionaries or arrays).

plist example from tab bar navigation data

Static data is exactly what it sounds like: a row with a set value of information. Typically you would create a set of arrays or dictionaries to hold these different static bits of data. Below are the 5 different types you can choose from:

Boolean
Data
Date
Number
String

Dictionaries vs. Arrays

This interesting idea has popped up on more than one occasion. By default Xcode 4 will create your property lists running with new dictionary items. The difference between dicts and arrays is that each dictionary row is given a unique key name.

Arrays just get the objects numerically so you can loop through them in code. It’s annoying when you have to change between these two types of containers since Xcode doesn’t offer an easy solution. But now let’s change our “New item” into an array so our document doesn’t rely on Keys.

Editing the Source Code

Close the new opened window and move back into the main Xcode interface. Right-click or control+click on our plist and select Open As -> Source Code. This allows us to directly edit the XML content which is currently the only way to change from the default dictionary listing.

Look at the structure we have setup currently and you’ll see a tag wrapped <dict></dict>. We need to change these to read array similar to what I have below.

 <plist version="1.0"> <array> 	<key>New item</key> 	<integer>0</integer> </array> </plist>

If we switch back to Property List view you’ll see our row is now indexed as “Item 0″. Now if we go to add in new rows they will automatically fill in the key name incrementing by +1 each time. This is my preferred method of setting up a Property List document since dictionary keys can get very confusing very quickly.

Building a Small Demo

Now to put this all together I want to build a simple demo we can use for future reference. I’ve created a document named SpeckyPosts.plist which will hold an array of 5 different dictionaries. Inside each dict I’ve added 3 static rows of data – a blog post title, URL, and number of comments.

This is confusing to explain in words but it makes a lot of sense once you look at the code. Basically our root document contains an array with five items, and these items are typecast as dictionaries. Inside each dictionary we have 3 key => value pairs which are postTitle, URL, and comments. You can also copy/paste any of the array items to duplicate content and add more posts into the list.

SpeckyApp Info plist data view

This setup is very easy to format and loop through in your code. If you’d like to take a peek at my example document you can download it here or go through the source code as direct XML.

 <plist version="1.0"> <array> 	<dict> 		<key>postTitle</key> 		<string>On Tastes, Trends and Personal Styles</string> 		<key>URL</key> 		<string>http://speckyboy.com/2012/03/18/on-tastes-trends-and-personal-styles/</string> 		<key>comments</key> 		<integer>0</integer> 	</dict> 	<dict> 		<key>postTitle</key> 		<string>Say Hi To Anchor – A Super-Tiny CMS</string> 		<key>URL</key> 		<string>http://speckyboy.com/2012/03/09/say-hi-to-anchor-a-super-tiny-cms/</string> 		<key>comments</key> 		<integer>14</integer> 	</dict> 	<dict> 		<key>postTitle</key> 		<string>A Showcase of Enchanting Vintage Advertisements</string> 		<key>URL</key> 		<string>http://speckyboy.com/2012/03/04/a-showcase-of-enchanting-vintage-advertisements/</string> 		<key>comments</key> 		<integer>6</integer> 	</dict> 	<dict> 		<key>postTitle</key> 		<string>The Challenge of Responsive Images</string> 		<key>URL</key> 		<string>http://speckyboy.com/2012/03/05/the-challenge-of-responsive-images/</string> 		<key>comments</key> 		<integer>5</integer> 	</dict> 	<dict> 		<key>postTitle</key> 		<string>How to Build a Sliding One Page Portfolio with jQuery</string> 		<key>URL</key> 		<string>http://speckyboy.com/2011/10/12/how-to-build-a-sliding-one-page-portfolio-with-jquery/</string> 		<key>comments</key> 		<integer>27</integer> 	</dict> </array> </plist>

Useful Resources

If you’d like to explore plists further on your own then check out some of the links below. There are tons of tutorials & websites you can browse, and even web forums where developers are happy to answer some of your more detailed questions.

Conclusion

I hope this introduction to plists has peaked your interest in Xcode and app development altogether. Apple’s NeXTSTEP library is full of unique code examples just like this. It takes a bit of practice getting used to these methodologies at first. But following standards will streamline your development process and make debugging a whole lot easier.

You might also like…

Tips for Wireframing a Usable Mobile App Interface →
Getting Started Building iPhone Apps in Xcode 4.2 →
Creating Pixel-Perfect UI for iPhone Applications →
Ultimate Collection of Printable Mobile Sketching Templates →
Showcase of Beautiful and Unique iPhone Apps →
30 Brilliant iOS Applications for Freelance Designers and Developers →

Design fricks news

Freitag, 6. April 2012