Tersus: iPhone Development on Mac

iPhone Development on MacDate: May 14, 2012Tags:iPhone,MacMac is the natural computer to use when developing iPhone and iPod Touch applications, if you can afford one, although with Tersus you can do the development on other machines as well (e.g. on Windows or Linux).Preparations

Download and install the Tersus Studio from here.

Register as an iPhone Developer to be able to download and install the iPhone SDK (you will use it later to compile the applications you develop and transfer them to your iPhone device).

If you plan to develop native iPhone applications, register to Apple's iPhone Developer Program. Registration is required to transfer applications to your iPhone device. It takes a few days (or even a couple of weeks) and costs $99.

Development

Development is made within the Tersus Studio (launch Tersus).

For more details see one of the tutorials listed here.

For additional built-in components refer to the documentation of the iPhone palette.

Testing

Initial testing of your application can be made from within the Tersus Studio. Simply save your changes and launch the application (

). The application will start inside your Safari browser in a screen simulating an iPhone.

For a better simulation, you can use the iPhone Simulator that is included in the iPhone SDK. It can be used to test both iPhone web applications and native iPhone applications, but for a native application it requires exporting the application first as an Xcode project (see below).

And, of course, once the application is deployed, the best testing would be using it from your iPhone device.

Deployment - iPhone Web Application

All you need to do is host the application on a server that is accessible through the internet. Users will be able to use the application from their iPhone devices by simply going to the application's URL (e.g. http://applications.my-company.com/MyGreatApp/).

To make life easier for your iPhone users, who might have hard time typing long URLs, try to use short names.

Deployment - Native iPhone Application

In the Tersus Studio, press the iPhone export button in the upper toolbar (

). Provide a name for the project and an export location (the default location is a sub-folder export inside the folder of the Tersus project).

Press Finish. An Xcode project will be created in the selected export location.

Compile and run the Xcode project you have just created on your iPhone device or within the iPhone Simulator:

Open the Xcode project (the easiest way to find it is to search in Spotlight for the .xcodeproj file).
Connect your iPhone device to the Mac.
Inside Xcode, in the upper left box select either Device or Simulator.
Press Build and Go.
If everything works OK, the application should run on your iPhone device or on the iPhone Simulator.

For more details, including signing the code using a certificate, see here.