Common tasks in tutorials

[funkyboy]

I don't know if this is the right place to discuss this. If not let me know.

When writing a tutorial/chapter it is likely you need to provide instructions for common tasks like "link against framework x" or "create a mobile provisioning profile". These require a sequence of tasks that is repeated over and over in many tutorials.

I propose to have a section in the site that describes these common tasks, so that in the tutorial we can simply say "link against framework x and y (here are instructions if you don't know how to link against a framework)" and that's all.

What do you think?

[moayes]

+1 it is a great idea.

[ghost]

I brought up a related idea to Ray a while back. I think we have a lot of repetitive instructions that make the tutorials a bit wordy and harder to work with for non-beginners.

For example, creating a new file. It would be nice to just say "create a new class named Blah that subclasses Whatever" or something similar, rather than spelling out menus and such over and over again.

Rather than constantly including a link for simple instructions (which would be wordy and repetitive in a worse way), I suggest a permanent link on the site that goes to a Primer type of tutorial that explains basic things like this.

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On Nov 12, 2013, at 7:48 AM, Soheil Moayedi Azarpour notifications@github.com wrote:

+1 it is a great idea.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[ColinEberhardt]

This is a very interesting point. For iOS 7 by Tutorials, we adopted an abbreviated style.

Create a new class called BookView, making it a subclass of UIView.

As opposed to

Create a new class by going to File\New\File…, choosing the iOS\Cocoa Touch\Objective-C class template, and clicking Next. Name the class BookView, make it a subclass of UIView and click Next. Check the box to add the new class to the TextKitMagazine target and finally click Create.

I wonder whether this style should be adopted throughout?

It would be really cool if we could have snippets that show the abbreviated form, but would expand into the more explicit form if the user required detailed instructions :-)

[rwenderlich]

I think this is a great idea, but probably nothing to do with the style guide.

I have it on my TODO list to get this project started once we get the book updates and a few other projects done :] I agree it will be nice not to have to be so step-by-step for advanced readers, but still have a way for beginners to follow along (i.e. read the "basic steps" guide).

[funkyboy]

Ok, I am gonna close this.