The first concept we were assigned to learn for class this semester was the UICollectionView. Last semester we dedicated a great deal of time to learning UITableView. This seemed like a good first project since this was similar to the table views.

It was recommended that we look at the slides from the 2012 WWDC presentation on the collection views. I downloaded these presentations, but I had trouble focusing on them. I also opened the documentation from Apple. Both of these sources were rather dry and I wanted to find a tutorial.

The first tutorial I found was this one. This tutorial appealed to me because it also utilized two other concepts I have not learned or played around with yet: Storyboards and Auto Layout. I thought this would be a safe opportunity to play around with these things.

The tutorial is fantastic. I realized as I was working through the tutorial that it also utilized an API from Flickr. I applied for a developer key and I worked through the first part of the tutorial.

I realized that this was a little bit of overkill for the assignment we have been given. I looked for a simpler tutorial and I came across this one. This tutorial was written by the author of the book “Pro iOS Table Views”. I looked through this book earlier in the year when I was learning table views and the guy knows his stuff.

I have worked through the tutorial and reached a point where the program doesn’t work and I am uncertain as to why. I was waiting to write this post until I figured it out, but I have a deadline to show I have made a modicum of progress this semester. I am uploading the program to BitBucket later tonight and I will continue to work on debugging the project. Later I will post an update as to why the project was not working.