I'm trying to plan out an application on the iPhone/Android that could be used to track dates/locations of events and update them as necessarily but I really have no idea what kind of method I should take.
Currently, there's two ideas for methods in my head:
1) Make a mobile webpage/website that could be updated with the necessarily information, then display this particular webpage/website on the App for users to view.
2) Make an app in iOS/Android to do the above without displaying the webpage at all.
The first idea is the easiest for me to grasp, since I roughly know the procedures of setting this method up. Displaying the webpages on a iPhone/Android screen should be relatively easy and this also allows me to only update the webpage with the latest information and all without (hopefully) building some kind of update system for the app itself.
The second idea is probably the better of the two, since I can make use of all the nifty features in the iOS/Android to make some pretty cool (what are the cool things, i don't know yet) things. I'm not exactly experienced in the field of creating apps, and I really have no idea how to start some kind of self-update functionality on an app, seeing all the apps I've done thus far are offline-based apps that does not communicate with anything save for local files. Should I get the App upon startup to download a file (XML or whichever?) to "read" the contents then update as necessarily?
Or should I just go for the first method, since it can be more efficient than the second one?
I'm really lost here, can anyone offer some tips and advice?
I believe that the first approach is a good one but I would suggest the following:
1- Create the website that will do all the business in your mind then
2- Port out the application in an easy way to be a mobile application how? Please have a look into this http://www.appcelerator.com/
3- Another idea that would save you the pain of going into all the above is to create a facebook application, this way you can make use of the facebook infrastructure and you will have the viral effect as I guess thats what you are looking for.
I hope I've introduced a good tips for you.
Related
In my game, I'm planning to add IAPs for different level packs that the player will be able to buy and play in the game. But after reading documentations on IAPs, there's still one question I'm wondering : Is it better to download the new content from Apple's server, or unlock it in the game with NSUserDefaults?
The problem is that if I chose option 2, the content will be easily hackable, and the app will need an update for each DLC I'm adding.
And the problem with option 1 is that the new content will be downloaded in the Documents folder, but my app search the list of levels in the resource folders (I know it's not hard to implement, but I'm just saying the pros and cons)
Anyone can tell me which one is the best practice, and why?
Thanks in advance!
Well, I think both options are good. Whats the size of these packs? If you have numerous iaps all consisting of new levels, id recommend to have them downloadable, imagine shipping the app without the extra levels, quite a network-loadoff.
As you are stating, option nr 1 gives you the ability to add levels dynamically. This is convenient since apple are quite slow when it comes to uploading of new builds. Come to think of it, they are not super fast when it comes to revising your DLC either.
Due to the hacking risk and initial reduction of app-filesize, I would definately go with option one but if possible, i'd provide the actual content from a private FTP server. That way, the new content is available directly.
Which backend should I use in my app? Basically I want a user to be able to submit a number to the cloud, and have another user be able to receive it.
Is Parse.com the best solution to this?
This article might help you make a choice.
I have seen a couple of projects that initially used parse, but later on switched to helios
. Main reasons being transparency of costs and flexibility.
I am developing an SDK for iOS. It basically help developers to use our service by placing button in any one of the screen. More than that, we are providing analytics.
In a website, I can provide a javascript snippet, which will help us track the usage and log it for analytics. Developers can place it in any template which is used universally (like in footer.html) and forget about it.
What would the ideal approach for the same in iOS. Basically I would like developers to init our service from AppDelegate or any one point and it should track the usage. Data that I would like to track are
User's id,app version, app id, etc. (Can be collected at the point the library is inited)
Usage time (time from the app was opened to went to background, which again can be tracked easily)
Viewcontrollers loaded and from where it was loaded (Couldn't find a solution unless developer extend viewcontroller from our class, or we write a category. Need a better solution as in AOP)
Button clicks (Same as 3rd point)
For all these, if we provide a solution like call [OurLibrary passFlag:VIEWCONTROLLERLOADED withViewController:self] will help it. But we don't want developers to do it explicitly.
Idea is to have our integration as easy as possible for the developers. Any ideas folks?
I want to build simple web based app, where users, for example, could push the spacebar button, and then do something further, like answer a question, and while other users at the same time only sees that this question is not available any more for answer. When user submits answer, everyone see it.
All right, here is an example. I have seen TV shows, where four players have one button, if one or two of them know answer, they hit a button, and one lamp turns on and the first is allowed to answer, while other keeps their mouths shut. I want to build the same idea, but in the web.
But problem is that, I don't know where to start, what keywords I should search for help on google and so on. I see, that it might work on HTML5, maybe JavaScript and so on.
I have idea using Ajax, but request it every second to get latest actions made seems rubbish. Also I found one service called Pusher, but it has limited users in one time, which doesn't fit my needs.
I need just ideas. Thanks.
Before you read the rest, a disclaimer: I work for Realtime.co but I do believe I can help here so I'm not trying to "pitch a sale".
You can check out Realtime (www.realtime.co). It's basically a set of tools for developers to use real time technologies on their projects. It uses websockets but does fallback to whatever the user's browser supports (such as long polling, for example).
Behind Realtime you have a one-to-one/one-to-many/many-to-many messaging system that will transport your messages to and from your users.
There's also a plus which is the fact that the Realtime framework is actually cross-platform. This means that you can even have your web users communicate with iPhone users, Android, users, Windows Phone, desktop applications, server applications, etc..
You can learn about the JavaScript API here: http://docs.xrtml.org/getting_started/hello_message.html#javascript.
You only need to register at Realtime.co as a developer and start using the free license.
I really hope that helps.
Okey, I think I will go with node.js.
Writing all this previous post, made me think in right way :)
We are looking at building a b2b application for the iPhone. A major concern is the possible delay in publishing updates to the applications. I would like to believe that all updates will be orderly, but the reality of a newly found bug for a client or an upcoming trade show could mean that updating the application NOW is critical. Even an "expedited" day wait would not be acceptable.
One option I have thought of is having a flag for each page that we send down when the user logs into our server. If the flag is set, then instead of the native screen for a given page, there would be a page with a UIWebView that would get the latest HTML from the web or stored HTML loaded at the time of login.
I would prefer storing the HTML and using it "offline" because a data connection cannot be guaranteed.
The questions are:
1) Does this violate any of Apple's licensing?
2) Is this feasible or is there a hole I am not thinking of?
It doesnt violate Apple's guidelines and as far as I know you are not missing anything here...in fact, we have the exact same problem in my company (which on top of the issue that you have, we have customers that would like to "brand" the app for their users, and thats how we accomplish that) and there are no issues with apple (for now...:)). Obviously, you need to think of user experience implications...hope that helps.