I am looking for tools that I can attach to the app that would allow me to test the user interface. I was thinking about something like a click map to see where users are touching in the application, or any other visual tools that help improving the touch and feel of the app. I am not referring to analytics like Flurry or Localytics. I am looking for something more like crazyegg.com but for iphone apps.
I am using heatma.ps in my apps. It lets you test where people touch in you application, which buttons are used more then other. It's pretty good about showing you what gestures users make on your application screen, like if they are trying to scroll down.
You would be surprised how people use your interface. I know I was shocked the first time I found that people don't see the help button that I spend hours to implement with help snippets. Oh well, people are different :-)
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I was wondering how difficult it would be to implement Sproutcore into my webpage for the simple task of being able to scroll DIV's on an iPhone or iPad with one finger instead of two.
Or is there an easier way?
Thank you in advance!
Pulling in SproutCore for just this purpose would be unwise, especially for a mobile app, as it would include far too much weight for very little added functionality for your app.
If you just want to have an iOS scroll view, there are other much lighter libraries for just this. A quick search (for "iOS html scroll view javascript") reveals:
http://code.google.com/mobile/articles/webapp_fixed_ui.html (how google does it)
SproutCore is a complete web application framework; incorporating it into an existing design for the purpose of getting touch scrolling functionality is probably more tool than you need. I'd look at JS libraries which are just interaction libraries, not application frameworks.
Instead of starting from scratch, I was wondering if there were any ready made iPhone functionality for presenting a store's item lists (small picture and main info) and detail pages (all images and full info).
All data is already stored in an online database and setting up Web Services or the like for communication is not a problem, but iPhone development experience is limited.
Do you know of anything of that nature that I might utilize?
Sounds like the perfect opportunity to develop a web application specifically for the iPhone. I can't remember the name of the book off the top of my head, but do know that it's offered by O'Reilly. The other upside is you will now have an app that's accessible by other devices also.
Here's the book, it even includes the hooks to interface natively to the iPhone.
A good place to start is looking through some of the code examples available at Apple's iOS developer site. I believe there is a 'Recipe List' example that might be similar to what you are looking to do. Hope that helps!
I am a meganoob in iPhone Application programming.
All I want to do is make an application with a single button. When you press the button, it plays an audio file.
The button is just two images, one for the normal state and one for the pressed state.
I have no clue how to get from point A to point B, it seems so straightforward in web design, why can't it be like that for this too?
Anyone out there willing to drop some hints?
iPhone development is nothing like web design. Nearly all programming is not like web design, for that matter.
Start with a good introduction to iPhone development.
To answer this specific question, once you have learned the basics of iPhone development, you might look at the Audio Session portion of the SDK. You'll know how to hook up actions to buttons at this point, such as a play action for an audio file.
Then do this as a web app. Seriously. Originally, that was Apple's solution to writing all apps for the iPhone. They gave it an HTML 5 browser and wanted people to design custom web pages. So if you can do this on the web (BTW: I could not but could do this in Objective-C in little time), do it that way.
You can create a link to your web page on the homescreen so it looks like an app.
start from hello world for iPhone dude
This just saves time.
Since I already have a web applciation.
I can just stick it inside a webview.
The question is: Does it turn off many users? How many users will be disgusted that the entire iPhone app is written in WebView?
I think it's pretty safe to say that most iPhone users are expecting apps to use the power of the iPhone, not just be a portal to a mobile website.
Think about facebook mobile compared to iPhone facebook app. If you're an iPhone user, I'm assuming you'd much rather use the app than a mobile version of the site (or mobile version of the site contained in a WebView in a an app).
That being said, depending on your app, if the mobile version of your app is highly usable, it could be okay...
Just my thoughts...
John Gruber on Daring Fireball just wrote about this today.
From a usability perspective, native apps usually feel better. They may also be more responsive and handle large amounts of data more gracefully. I have a few so-called "apps" on my devices which are just glorified Web apps, and they don't necessarily scream quality.
If you've already done your app, then just ship it. But keep your mind open to feedback from your users.
The answer is almost certainly "no". People care far more about the usability and experience of interacting with your application than what API-supplied widget you use to render it.
I read Apple has begun removing apps that are like this. Well technically, they remove apps they think could be easily implemented as a webapp instead. Yours obviously qualifies ;)
Source: http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/07/apple-cookie-cutter-apps/
EDIT: Apple seems to not mind, according to the Human Interface Guidelines:
If you have a webpage or web application, you might choose to use a web view to implement a simple iPhone application that provides a wrapper for it.
Of course, Apple has a tendency to contradict themselves. ;)
Apple human interface guidelines says this isn't even allowed. I forget where it comes from, but somewhere in the guideline it says apps that are only web views are not allowed. I'm about 95% sure I've seen this. Can anyone confirm?
I want to build an application that gets updates from online websites like Twitter or Facebook. Currently, I haven't even got a clue on how to do this.
Also, in certain applications, like Doodle Jump, I have seen updates that pop up. Some other applications have a news section that gets updated often. How is it done? Any tutorial or working code will be very helpful.
There is a good tutorial I used to do this with ASP.NET.
I'm going to guess that you are interested in building an iPhone app. I don't know if you have any experience working with objective-c or the iPhone SDK, but here is a nice tutorial that touches on some of the concepts you will need.
http://icodeblog.com/2009/07/09/integrating-twitter-into-your-applications/