Apple is now requiring a retina and 4-inch display Splash page (i.e. the "Default-568h#2x.png") for all apps to be submitted, which is fine. However, when I include that and then do another build, once I get into the app, instead of it being centered with dark on the top and bottom (as it was before), is now top-aligned on the screen with 2x the blank space on the bottom.. which looks really unprofessional.
Is there any way via our configuration to tell the OS to go back to centering the app, despite that it has the now-required 4" Splash page included? Ideally I'd like to be able to do this without updating every single IB view in the app to center it manually, as I feel the OS should still be able to do this somehow via configuration.
FYI, answers that say "update your entire app for 4"!" are unacceptable. There are clients who don't yet have a creative budget for this but still want to keep their existing app looking decent in the store. If it's not possible, then it's not possible, but that is why I'm asking the question.
Thanks in advance for any assistance on this, and my apologies if this has already been asked.
As of May 1 if your submitting this app to the app store you will be required to support both retina display's, and the new 4" screen size.
https://developer.apple.com/news/index.php?id=3212013b
You misunderstand. As of now, you must fully support the full 4" screen of the iPhone 5 and 5th gen iPod touch, in addition to retina and non-retina devices.
By adding the "Default-568h#2x.png" launch image (it is not a splash screen) you are telling the OS that your app supports the 4" screen.
You must update your app to fill the screen. There are countless existing posts about how to do that. There is no way around this. It is 100% required - no exception from Apple.
BTW - Apple announced this requirement on March 21st. Every registered iOS developer was notified of the requirement.
It isn't possible to do what you're asking with a single setting. Your best options are a bit of code that runs when you load a view to change the origin.y position, or, go through the XIB files and update the autoresizing rules so that the views expand to fill the space. You might not have budget to update the graphics resources in the app but you should be able to spend the small amount of time required on autoresizing.
The caveat to 'small amount of time' may apply to you - if you explicitly set the size of all of your views in code you've made life painful for yourself.
Related
Xcode automatically added black default.png to my project . I didn't change it and I've sent it to the apple , it's waiting for review . Is it a rejection reason ? The default.png s can be just black or not ?
A black default image will not cause your app to be rejected. I have had apps accepted with no default image at all - if the app starts quickly enough, or there is no appropriate content for a launch image, then you don't need one.
Rant: Using the larger default image to indicate that an iPhone app works on the iPhone 5 is (IMO) a pretty poor decision - a key in the info plist would be much more sensible. As devices get faster, and resolution gets higher, launch images are becoming ridiculous. A universal app supporting iPhone 3, 4, 5, iPad and retina iPad will have megabytes of basically wasted space, to support an image that is shown for milliseconds. It was needed when devices were slower, but not really now.
Section 10.6 of the App Store Guidelines says:
10.6 Apple and our customers place a high value on simple, refined, creative, well thought through interfaces. They take more work but are worth it. Apple sets a high bar. If your user interface is complex or less than very good, it may be rejected
Apparently people are getting apps approved without launch screens (even though they're listed as required in the HIG and I would not have thought that a blank screen would qualify), so we'll keep our fingers crossed!
I've been a Flash animator for a few years and recently tried my hand at developing a simple iOS application using Flash CS6 and AS3.
When I began development I was creating for the iPhone 4S' screen size, however now with the release of the iPhone 5 the new screen size obviously doesn't fill the screen, resulting in the black-bar letterboxing at the top and bottom of the screen.
I have three questions to ask:
Is it possible to release two different versions of the app onto the App Store for separate devices or does it have to be universal? (I believe the answer is the latter but I can't find a definitive answer)
Is it possible to have a stage size that matches the iPhone 5's larger display but cut off the bottom (for example) for the previous iPhone sizes, in effect just adding some information to the bottom of the screen exclusively for iPhone 5 users?
If (2) is not possible, is there coding examples available change positions of items on the screen? For example, I have a title and taskbar as well as a background, could I code it to stretch to the size of the device screen rather than the stage? And would I need to alter the stage size or is there code available to do that for me?
I'm quite new to the programming aspect of AS3 and I'm sorry if there are answers that you feel that I should know, but I'm really thankful for your time to read and answer and I thank you in advance for your replies!
Ben Kahan
While all of your options are possible, you'll want to make sure your program dynamically lays itself out and resizes visual assets depending on screen size, pixel density and orientation.
More here:
One Application, Five Screens (Including the iPad)
and
Writing Multiscreen AIR Apps
You should look into doing number 3! 1 will be a hell to maintain, 2 will piss off users with smaller screen. If you design your application a bit more flexible, that would also mean you have an app that works on android ;)
I don't have any particular code for handling different screen sizes, but I remember reading about it back when Adobe introduced FP for mobile. This article gives a lot of good advice for delveloping for mobile (even though it is a bit old) -- maybe you can find something that is more up to date though google :)
I have an already shipped app on App Store that made use of Storyboard.
I see from the keynote, comparing to previous model that iPhone 5 has a taller screen.
I wonder how this will impact on my esisting storyboard, because from my 'app point of view' there's only one difference which is the background.png. All the rest is just plain UITableView that can just fit more rows.
I cannot find any document for this on Apple site (I have always been so noob in finding things on Apple developer site).
Has anyone made adjustment to his already developed and published app to match with new layout ?
If yes, do I have to develop a brand new storyboard, or is there an adjustment to be done with code ?
[UPDATE]
I am reporting my experience, now that Xcode 4.5 is long shipped for development.
Xcode itself, as some suggested, asked me if I would like to enable tallest screen support by creating a default png. After saying yes, I had to enter each segue in storyboard for some adjustment, change png background (which was unstrechable by design) with a tallest one, change stretching settings and redeploy.
It has been an annoying work because I have quite some segues, and Xcode doesn't allow to reuse templates within Interface Builder.
Old apps without 1136x640 resolution support will run letterboxed, with black areas on top and bottom.
You can enable new layout support for existing project simply by supplying new Default-568h#2x.png loading screen. Take heed though, you'll have to test your old interface on both old and new resolution (via iOS Simulator) to make sure everything looks good and works as designed.
Its been said when iphone 5 is launched that your app view will be filled with black color on top and bottom if it is not taking account for the increase size ( not designed for iphone5 screen)
so your app will just work fine but will have black border on both and top to filled the extra space..
I have an iPhone app that I want to change into an iPad app. I do not want to make it universal. The result should be an iPad only app. The main problem I see is converting all of my .xib files. I realize that I will have to change some things around manually, but I would like as much as possible (including all of the painstakingly made connections in IB) to carry over. Also, if there are unlikely places where I need to change settings, please give me a hint to that as well. Thanks!
Xcode has a convert option. It gives you the choice between a new app or a universal one.
This will convert all your NIBs, but quite how useful that is will depend on how thorough you've been with the sizing options in Interface Builder. For me is mostly worked. A couple of minor tweaks for a couple of views and a complete rewrite for some others.
Of course you'll also have to work with view controllers that "manually" build the view.
The gotchas I found were around orientations (iPad apps should work in all four orientations) and with the screen size. There are also some oddities with the keyboard and modal views if you have any of those (there are a few kinds of modal view, and the keyboard does not always dismiss). As ever when you're making automated changes, testing is key.
The full process took me a lot longer than I was expecting.
Few thoughts for changing iPhone app to iPad app.
Xcode has the provision to change the current iPhone app to iPad app by using "Upgrade current target for iPad" menu command.
http://www.enscand.com/roller/enscand/entry/ready_for_ipad
resize all current view to the ipad size 768*1024(portrait) and then resize all the subviews respectively. the connections doesn't get lost by doing this.
What should Default.png contain? Currently it seems that iPhone OS makes snapshots of the screen before closing the app, and next time it launches with that exact snapshot as "splash screen image".
A guy here in Russia told me that this is only happening when Multitasking works on the device.
What would I show in Default.png now? I don't want that the app launch sucks for users without multitasking, and I don't want it to suck for users with multitasking where the app had to hardcore-launch anyways (i.e. first launch at all). So what would that contain? A screenshot of the app screen how it looks after a hard launch from scratch? But what if my app is clever and saved state, and the UI looks completely different after launch?
What are you guys putting in Default.png and why?
If fast-app switching is working on the app as part of multi-tasking, you are correct in stating that the OS will take a snapshot and restore your app to this state after it comes out of the background. If the OS is saving state for you, then coming out of the background doesn't "suck" since it brings you app back into view looking just like it did when it left. It's almost like minimizing a window on Mac OSX and then maximizing it again... you just pick up from where you left off before.
Be advised though that the app could get killed at anytime in the background without warning or notifications being sent to you. In that case, you should still save state and try to create a splash screen that works with all of your views (i.e. has a tab bar at the bottom, or a nav bar at the top, etc). If you can't do that, you might consider just doing what Jesse has done with a company or app splash screen (even though Apple doesn't endorse this, but they won't reject you for it either).
As Jesse stated, Apple recommends creating an outline of the main elements to familiarize the user with your app and to give the appearance of faster loading. More information is here
For iPhone splash screens I am still using a company logo splash. for iPad, a basic "outline" of what the screen i am coming into will look like (a splitview basically, depending on orientation). The fact that default.png isn't editable does make this tricky though.