Cocoa Programming Developer's Handbook

Book excerpt: The Cocoa programming environment—Apple’s powerful set of clean, object-oriented APIs—is increasingly becoming the basis of almost all contemporary Mac OS X development. With its long history of constant refinement and improvement, Cocoa has matured into a sophisticated programming environment that can make Mac OS X application development quick, efficient, and even fun. Yet for all its refined elegance and ease of use, the staggering size of the Cocoa family of APIs and the vast magnitude of the official documentation can be intimidating to even seasoned programmers. To help Mac OS X developers sort through and begin to put to practical use Cocoa’s vast array of tools and technologies, Cocoa Programming Developer’s Handbook provides a guided tour of the Cocoa APIs found on Mac OS X, thoroughly discussing—and showing in action—Cocoa’s core frameworks and other vital components, as well as calling attention to some of the more interesting but often overlooked parts of the APIs and tools. This book provides expert insight into a wide range of key topics, from user interface design to network programming and performance tuning.