I'm building a game for the iphone, and the main window displays an image in the background describing the game, and I have few other layers of images which are the buttons such as Start New Game, Options and Help.
Should the launch image be only the background image describing the game without the extra image layers or should it be image including the other layers which are Start New Game, Option and Help?
Thanks.
The bit covering launch images can be found here. Below is an example launch image (left) provided by Apple.
Their docs specifically site concerns about localization, so it's probably best to do without the text and provide an image that just has your background chrome for the view.
The launch image should give the illusion of a really fast launching of your app. So the better image in your case is an hybrid of your proposal.
You should have the background image describing the game with the extra image layers without the text inside your buttons (Start new game, etc.) If you include the text, the user could think that your app is loaded and would tap on it.
Hope this helps
All the Apple guidelines on launch images are available here (scroll down to "Launch Images" section). It seems like the convention is to show buttons but not table view data, based on the examples show and from observing other Apple apps.
It's probably up to you to determine which looks better. I have seen many apps on the app store that totally ignore all of these things you aren't supposed to do:
An “application entry experience,” such as a splash screen
An About window
Branding elements, unless they are a static part of your application’s first screen
So I don't think it's that important for App Store acceptance, but it is very important for user experience.
Related
I have developed and published one TVOS app. In my app project, I put icon images, launch image and top shelf image. I also put two screenshots in the app configuration part on the developer.apple.com.
Now the app is online. The top shelf image is fine when the app is in focus. But the top shelf image is not used as the background image in the App introduction part in the App Store. I want to get the full background like the game app. Where shall I configure that image and what is the dimension of the image? Thanks in advance! I attach images to make my questions more clear.
My app looks like this when it is focused on the Apple TV. I want to use this topshelf image for the app introduction background.
But it looks like this in the app store. I don't want to see the screenshot on the right side of the screen. There is no background image at the introduction part.
I want to get the full-background for the introduction page like this app.
You have no control over that. Only apps selected by Apple's App Store editors are given the privilege to have a customized App Store page.
Note, the standard background on the Apple TV App Store, is created automatically based on your app's icon. It's a large, blurred out version of your icon. So in your case, you see that red line, and a lot of white, which is exactly what you have in your icon.
I'm trying to build an application that is launched has a transparent background, in practice, showing only the objects in view (buttons, labels etc etc) but not the background so you can see the background the user's home.
In the example file you can see the purple square image at the center of the screen, in theory should be a normal UIView with a picture in the center but does not see the background of UIWindow/UIView.
Is possible to realize such a thing? Can anyone help me?
thanks
No. It's not possible using the official SDK. I'm interested to know why you would want to do this?
It might be possible, try setting the window background color to clear, as well as the view controller's view background color.
I say it might be possible because I've seen my home screen while using some apps, for example, the Facebook app sometimes shows it during a transition (it might be a bug on either Facebook or the OS).
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that kind of app would be rejected from the App Store, so be advised.
I have developed a straight iPhone/iPod Touch app.
A launch image is implemented for Retina displays as well as the lower resolution of the former generation devices.
Those images are displayed properly on the iPhone simulator as well as on several iPhone an iPod Touch devices.
However, since some days, when launched on an iPad (1) or iPad simulator one of the other images within the app is shown.
Apparently the image that is displayed wrongly, is one of two amongst ca. 70 images within the app. Those two images happen to be either
1. the first image in my xcode project groups hierarchy.
-or-
2. the first image in my project in alphabetical order.
I did not yet find a pattern of when 1. or 2. happens, so when the first image in the project's hierarchy of groups is taken or when the first in alphabetical order is taken. But it seems to be one of these two files only.
Any idea what I probably did wrong so that a wrong image is picked as launch image of this iPhone-only app whenever it is launched on an iPad?
Thanks in advance.
Cheers
Hermann
Try inserting an image named Default.png into Xcode. That's all, just drag it in. Xcode recognizes any picture named Default.png as the loading image. That should make it work.
To expand a little on Jack's answer - you can indeed use an image named Default.png which will automatically be used as a launch image for your app.
However,you can also customise the launch image for particular hardware and device orientations by using images of a particular size and name - for example, a 768x1004 pixel image named Default-Portrait~ipad.png added to your project will be automatically used as the launch image when you launch the app on an iPad in portrait orientation.
The use of these customised images is highly recommended, as it allows the launch image to be sized appropriately for the different shapes of screen (i.e. iPhone and iPad), and allows high resolution launch images to be used on Retina display devices.
For a list of these sizes and image names, see this page. The items of interest are the ones beginning with "Default"
All iPhone apps have a splash screen, or what Apple refers to as a “launch image”. It is the screen that is displayed immediately after you press your app’s icon on the home screen, while the app icons are sweeping away and your app is zooming into view.
Some apps opt not to display a splash screen and go for a black screen, which is the default behaviour when you create an app. Others display a wireframe of the app’s interface in order to look like it is loading faster. See Apple’s native apps such as Clock and Camera for good examples of this. The most common use of the splash screen (especially in games) is to present a company or game logo, as we do in Addicus:
Apple has made it so easy to set your splash screen that you don’t even need a single line of code to do it. Why, you don’t even need to change a setting. Here’s how to set your splash screen it in just 2 steps:
Add a file to your project’s Resource folder called Default.png.
There is no step 2. Take this time to reflect on how good life is.
And that’s it. Run your app and your splash screen will zoom into glorious view.
A couple of things to watch out for when working with splash screens:
Whatever image you give it will be scaled to fill the 320×480 resolution of the iPhone, so ideally you would use a 320×480-sized image.
If your iPhone app is running in landscape mode, you need to rotate the splash screen you use. For example, our splash screen is rotated 90 degrees to the right in the above image.
See more at: http://getsetgames.com/tag/launch-image/#sthash.GEXwuzsf.dpuf
This is my first iPhone application. So I have this long list of doubts :-)
My application has a UItableView on the first tab and a Contact us page on the third tab. In both these tabs I display images.
For the UITableView i get images from the server and for the contact us page I have a set of static images of my client.
My question is, is there any specifications on the quality of these images that I should follow to get my App approved in Appstore?? These images are readable, but not of high resolution.
I know there are guidelines on the Tabbar icon images, the splash screen images. But what about the static images and the images i receive from the server?
Guidance or help would be appreciated :)
There are specifications based on display. However it is not mandatory to support both the displays (normal and retina).
You may want to dig more into the HIG. If you don't have images of double resolution then on the retina display the appearance of the app may be bad.
However you can use any image(barring other violation like DRM, copyrights etc) in your app.
Approval is also based on a large number of parameters. The images may not be a part of it.However they will specify it explicitly if rejected.
Have fun.
If you feel the image is good then use it.. Apple wont gonna reject your app due to images.
But just keep in mind that there are few icons defined by apple for specific purpose like action icon for opening actionsheet, camera icon for opening camera console or wallpaper.
Just keep in mind that you are not changing the behaviour of the predefined icons....
Rest all is fine..
Happy iCoding...
What is the best way to create tutorial or help screens that can be viewed in an iPhone App on launch?
I'm debating between using two paradigms:
Edit a screenshot of the app with an image editing program to add static help text. Interaction is tapping or scrolling through the tips. This involves creating a custom UIViewController to advance to the next help screen.
Create a custom iPhone UIControl on top of the App user interface that can be tapped to advance to the next tutorial tip. The application will transition between the modes and will be active, rather than static. It involves adding hooks into the App's custom ViewController's to handle "TutorialUIControl" objects.
Here's some screenshots of the application that I need to make help screen UI for, it's an application that creates artwork. More App Information
Screenshot 1: View mode that allows viewers to scroll through an image list, like the UIImagePicker, but for custom image collections.
Screenshot 2: Action mode - allows viewers to select images to save to the "My Saved" album from the active art generation album "My Evolution" or evolve images using sexual/asexual image reproduction.
The "right" answer really depends on the application you are designing. I would highly suggest getting as many apps as you can and looking at how they do help. See what works and what doesn't and think about how that is related to your own design.
In my app (a game) I chose to build a set of static images that could be scrolled through to provide detailed help (based on Apple's sample code). But, I also built an interactive tutorial that plays the first time you run the game. I also pop up a welcome overlay the first time the app is run and suggest what button to press to start a game.
It also helps if you test your tutorial with a lot of different people. After several designs with things too complex, I boiled down my instructions to something extremely simple: "Press the green buttons", and then built up from there.
You can easily store a preference to say whether the app has been launched before, and if that entry is blank you run the tutorial again.
You can create an HTML tutorial that you view through a UIWebView. In on of my iPad apps, I just made a large image that I presented modally with images and text explaining how to use the app.
For iPhone, the best way to include a "How-To" tutorial for your app would have to be a web document, seeing as how you can add images and formatted text.
Alternatively, You can add more views to your controllers with transparent backgrounds and animated buttons and text, for a more interactive feel.
To answer my own questions many months later.
I revamped and used WEPopover to show my help popups, as seen in the iPhone/iPad App, Wallpaper Evolution Lite. The help disappears only if tapped or the button it was attached to was pressed. Using this flow I could highlight a series of buttons to the user.
I added help images within the application to highlight interaction behaviors with the content. The tap, zoom, and drag images are fully interactive.
As #WrightsCS mentioned HTML is another avenue. I use the UIWebView to provide a more in depth help/tips screen with contact information.
In my upcoming app, I'm making use of a paging UIScrollView with help content highlighting app features. The help screen is loaded on the first start of the app, and is accessible through a help menu option.
Here's my fork of the WEPopover github project: https://github.com/PaulSolt/WEPopover