Recently, i needed some graphics to represent a ✓ and a ✗ (After a ui re-design i didn’t need them but anyways…). I searched with googles lovely image search interface and brought some nice images into my xcode project. With a few simple lines of code i had them load up and rendered where i wanted them. Easy. But then i thought, hang on. That wasn’t easy at all. I had to find the assets and write code. Also, eventually the assets will have to be made by a designer, adding more work to the designers work load. It then struck me that the iphone and/or any device with an OS must have a bunch of assets sitting around to be used by the OS and possibly accessible through an api. Especially a tick and a cross! Then i thought, unicode. Its a standard, its built-in and all the rendering and options are already in place. All i have to do is code what character i want to show:
This lead me to look through all the unicode character’s (there’s quiet a few) and to remember to try and use them as much as possible in the future.