"Am I old?"

I was eight years old standing on the porch listening to instruments and watching a group of happy neighborhood adults walking in a small parade with black balloons and singing. They were all coming towards my house. What was this small parade for?

It was my father's birthday and he was turning 40 years old. They were having a good time and saying things like he was "over the hill", "an old man" and so on. I thought that this was when an adult is known as "old".

Here we are 42 years later and now I'm turning 50! Yet I don't even feel old. I'm not even sure what old is supposed to feel like. 😃

I still have passions and dreams. And I think as long as you still have passions and dreams, you can still feel relatively young. One of my biggest passions is programming. I love being creative and helping others. And so last year I started the tradition of the "Birthday Sale" where I discount my products by my new age so everyone can get something and celebrate. 🎉

There have been many updates and products since last year. Let's go over some of them and make sure you have the latest.

How do I know if I have the latest version of your books?
On the second page of every book is a date that is the version. It looks like this:

How do I know what was changed?
The most accurate way to know what was changed since your last update is to open the companion Xcode project and go to the Source Control Navigator (second tab on left). If you click on Branches > master, you will see all the commits since your last update. For example:

Since last year, the SwiftUI Views Mastery visual reference book has been completely updated for iOS 14. I had to go through and make sure SwiftUI still rendered the screens as you see in the book too. This is quite a task! Because this is a visual reference book, I have to make sure the visuals are up-to-date. Most recently I:

This book has now surpassed 800 pages. Remember, if you download the ePUB version, some of the example visuals are actually mini-movies that you can place right inside of the Apple Books app.

The biggest change is the addition of a whole new chapter on MatchedGeometryEffect. This chapter ended up being enormous. Using matchedGeometryEffect for simple transitions is fairly easy. But when it comes to using them inside a List, scrollable stack, lazy stack, or grid, it's a whole new level of problems and complexities.
Use this reference guide to figure it all out and create the best transitional effects you can inside of lists, stacks, and grids!

While this is a fairly recent release back in November 2020, I've continued updating it as I use it. The latest version includes some important red flags when using @AppStorage. 

Since releasing the library back in November of 2020 I have added over 40 more videos to it. I still have plans for more videos. I think this will continually grow through this year.
These videos are meant to be quick references to get you up to speed on a very specific topic, so you don't have to do a lot of scrubbing through the videos to find the thing you need to know.
There are a variety of videos you can preview to get a better idea of what is offered and how the information is presented.

When I first started providing content to the iOS community it was in the form of educational tutorials. And over the last years and a half, I've shifted my focus to providing "reference" materials.

What does that mean?

Think of a reference like a dictionary. You use a dictionary to find out what a particular word means and maybe some examples of how it's used. That's what I have been focused on creating this last year but for SwiftUI.

Why?

It's mostly because of lack of time and my own needs. I have a full-time job, family, and other responsibilities. So with the lack of time I have to keep things short.

But I also noticed I carved out a nice niche that fits in nicely with other great content creators who are creating tutorials. Instead of competing with other content creators, I can complement their courses instead.

The problem most of us have is we complete fantastic tutorials, get inspired, and later at some point, we try to implement what we learned and know we can do but we have to figure out WHERE we learned it.

Was it from when Code with Chris was walking us through our first app? Maybe it was one of Meng To's cool videos. Or one of Paul Hudson'sincredibly helpful YouTube videos. Or maybe it was when we were prepping for a job and we were going through Sean Allen's courses. It could be from a countless number of sources. And if you're like me, you've gone through MANY courses and tutorials. 🎓

So that's why I'm focusing on reference materials. It started out unintentionally but I really enjoy helping out in this way and supporting my favorite creators that produce incredible SwiftUI tutorial content.

I want to create life-long reference materials that you can keep open and get your answers quickly as you're developing. Which is exactly how I and now thousands of others do today!

Celebrate and take advantage of the biggest sale of the year! Everything is 50% off.
    Or you could wait until next year when everything will be 51% off. 😂

Just click on that link or enter the "50-BIRTHDAY" coupon code on checkout.

This is for ONE DAY ONLY! February 10th is my birthday and I start slightly early and end slightly after the 10th to account for time zone differences.

Take care my SwiftUI family!

Your SwiftUI friend,
Mark Moeykens
Big Mountain Studio