Can't create outlets in File's Owner on Xcode 4.5.1

I may not be able to help much, but I have a side interest in the beginning stages of learning Cocoa, since I just recently have been learning it myself, and I see a lot of good potential in more people becoming more fluent with it.

Are you already familiar with objective-C programming?

Well there seems to be two avenues for getting into XCode, and Apple seems to be advancing both of them.

The first way is to accept the pre-formatted styles and forms that apple is trying to create to make using x-code easier for new comers. If you can envision your app with a main menu, one or more windows, and a data base (which almost all apps can conform to) and you don't have too much desire to get into the fundamentals, then you can just stick with a document based application (which starts you off with a view, a view controller, and a data base if you want one).

If you find yourself constantly trying to change things that won't change, or trying to understand what does what and why, then you'll have to go the different route, and start from C to ObjectiveC, and learn a little more about the reasons for the steps that led to the Cocoa platform.

For the first route, it sounds like you just need to clearly recognize that the view controller .h file is mainly a reference for the view controller .m file. The view itself (the .xib file) is connected behind the scenes to the view controller .m file. Then you can get into the details of connecting specific buttons and outlets from the view (the .xib file) to the view controller, and adding the code that you want to add.

For the second route, you need to start off with what an object is.

You can easily generate a marketable app using the basic templates. I bought a little school math app for my sons a few years ago, and it worked great. That was before I knew anything about Cocoa, but I'm still happy with that little app.

So it sounds like the next big problem is figuring out how to join the controls and outlets to the controller. That is a huge problem and it's difficult for newcomers to figure it out.

The main step is that you have to have an IBOutlet as an instance variable in the view controller before it will show up as a possible connection in the .xib design platform.

Alternatively, you can drag a button, etc, using control-click, into the instance variable portion of a view controller.

That's the main idea, anyway. Sometimes I get the details wrong, but it's the details that makes the main ideas of Cocoa so difficult to understand.

It sounds like you are dragging the outlet to the application's folder? Anyway, that's not how it works. What you have to do is open the assistant editor window when the .xib file is open. The assistant editor will open next to or else under the .xib file. Then you open the controller file (I think you have to open the .h file) in the assistant editor window. You drag the outlet linker thing to the instance variable area of the text of the opened controller file.

All this does is add an IBOutlet instance variable to the controller. You can add it yourself by typing it, and then link the outlet from the available outlets using control-click or click and drag. That's another thing that makes the linking or creating of outlets and controls difficult to understand. There are like three or four ways to make an Outlet or controller with a linked variable.

The main idea is very simple. The .xib file makes a link behind the scenes to any IBOutlet type of variable. It makes the most sense to me to think of adding the IBOutlets by typing them into the file, and then selecting those for linking by using control-click on the field or button displayed in the .xib design platform. Then the process of dragging and dropping onto an open file to create the IBOutlet can be seen as a convenience. Otherwise, the process of dragging and dropping seems like a necessity, and the whole understanding of the variables and the application gets confused.

I'm not sure how a UIWebView works as an IBOutlet, I haven't done that. Did you name myWebView and myRequest somewhere else in the application?

Oh, I missed that myWebView. It looks like you didn't name myRequest. Where do you define myRequest?

Whenever you give the computer a new variable, you have to declare a type for the variable (and also you may optionally assign a value to it).