In the course of doing recipes for the Erica/Alexis project, I have learned that there are several things I need to be sure to do before modifying any of the base templates Apple provides.

1. Remember to add the app delegate string to main

When starting a new project, I am often faced with a black screen.  Despite the fact that this has happened to me three times now, it still takes me a bit of hair tearing before I remember it’s because I need to add the app delegate to the fourth parameter in the main method.

The solution to this, of course, would be to update my user templates so I don’t have to remember to do this every time.

2. Set the file’s owner to be the view controller

By default, the File Owner’s type is set to NSObject. When I have ViewControllers I want to use as a basis for my project, I need to change this so the File Owner’s type is set to my custom Root ViewController.

3. Remove the main xib line from info.plist

After changing (1) and (2), I was still getting this error: “2010-05-07 15:12:55.632 TwoItems[21829:207] Failed to load NSMainNibFile MainWindow.”

The problem was Read more »