I'm going to submit a Lifestyle app to the App Store. I'm confused whether to add a Splash Screen to the App or not ?
Please advise me whether it's a good or bad idea as far as usability and App Store's submission guidelines are concerned.
Its bad - you shouldn't do that!
Please read the Start Instantly Section of the Apple HI Guidelines
Avoid displaying an About window or a
splash screen. In general, try to
avoid providing any type of startup
experience that prevents people from
using your application immediately.
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/UEBestPractices/UEBestPractices.html
You should definitely at least add a Default.png to your app if I understand your question correctly.
Launching an app and looking at a black screen for a split second is not the best user experience. Some nice-looking image with your company name or app logo will do. Or you could follow Apple's guidelines and present an image of the starting user interface so that your app will seem to load instantly.
Here's a relevant doc.
The developers guides mostly suggest a splash that looks like the starting screen of your app, to give people the impression the app has started. This has the bonus of allowing the user to start figuring out what they want to do while the program finishes loading.
From a users standpoint, I dislike most splash screens, I just want to get to the program, not look once again at what constitutes an advertisement for the program.
if your app loads blazingly fast,then you can provide this method in
- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application
[NSThread sleepForTimeInterval:3];
Before your view controller is loaded.
It will halt the main thread for 3 seconds,which will give time to your splash screen.Thats the way i do and there is no problem with this method,as you are working on the main thread.
Yes, you can add a splash screen to your app.
Depending on what you do with your splash screen as far as extravagant animations go, I would go subtle, with minimal animations.
You can add a Default.png (see iOS documentation!) to your application bundle.
This image is being shown full screen while your application is loading.
Other than that, I wouldn't add a splash screen to your app.
Related
My application is an Air-based iPhone app. It opens with the last page I visited before clicking the Home button, each time I relaunch the app, while I need to open with the splash screen onward. How can I resolve this issue?
Thank you for any help.
When you press the Home button, you don't terminate a running app. I'm sure that many of us developers have stuck with this mental model of how iOS used to work without multitasking.
So, the splash screen, or rather, the default image (Default.png) should really appear once (when your application launches). Some times, the default image appears when coming out from the background state, but this happens only if your app takes too long to show its UI. In fact, on fast iPhones, the default image disappears almost instantly even on launch (for well-written apps, that is).
I should also note that Apple actively discourages the use of the default image for splash screens. These should only be used for creating an illusion of transition, from a "launching state" (which the default image is supposed to portray), to the running state.
However, if you really have to show a splash screen every time, you should implement such a mechanism in code. applicationDidBecomeActive: is a good place to start, if you are writing code in Objective-C.
I don't know the event model in Air, so I can't really give you any hints for that.
The above answer, though old, does not answer the question. Sure, Apple gives guidelines regarding splash screen and all, but the poster asks how to prevent the app from resuming from it's previous position. If you want the app to terminate when put in the background you need to look into the UIApplicationExitsOnSuspend option. There's also an Adobe blog post explaining a bit more about different background behaviors.
I have a splash image that I want to display when the app is launching. I use it as a launch image - I want it to be displayed until the program is launched (rename the picture to Default.png).
In apple's HIG they say one should "avoid" using a splash screen as a launch image.
I know it's not recommended and that users often don't like them, but will it make Apple reject my application? If so, how can I display a splash screen so it'll be displayed as soon as the app goes on, but not violate those rules? because I have seen applications with splash screens as launch images.
Thx in advance!
It's not that Apple will reject your App just coz you have a splash screen. But it's advisable to not have a splash screen as the user has to wait. Better not make the user wait...
Flipboard which was the Apple App of the year in 2010 has an image splash screen. As the user enjoys the images, data is downloaded in the background so that as soon as the user flips the page, the next screen is all ready & up to date. But they have made it in such a tasty fashion that the user hardly feels as if he's been made to wait. So it all depends on your design...
If you plan to simply use the Default.png mechanics to display your splash image, there is no problem.
The issue arises when you would like to prolong the display of such image only for the sake of it. This is what the HIG are against: that the user is made to wait without any real benefit. It is also to be noticed that with the advent of multitasking (iOS 4), the effect of showing a splash screen is reduced, since most of the times the app is not closed, so you see no splash screen at all when you go back to it.
On the other hand, it is understood that if you need to do some setup task in your app that take time and you have to do that at startup, then the user will have to wait. It is important, though, that he/she be notified of the wait and why it is for. This could mean, e.g., displaying a label on top of your image saying: "Loading..." or "Preparing data..." or whatever your user might better understand as part of the functionality of the program.
As to how to do it, there is no other way, AFAIK, than starting your app with a view that is exactly the same as Default.png (a simple UIImageView would do). That means, that in you appDidFinishLaunching delegate method, you create the view and attach it to the window; then, when you have done with your app preparation, you switch to your real view.
This would give you also the chance to add the label or whatever other kind of messaging to the user.
ok. I know how to display the splash screen on iPhone. Seems quite simple enough (i.e. setting the Default.png and calling "sleep" command).
But, is the application actually doing anything during this time? My app needs to go and fetch some data from Web before showing the app's first screen, but when I do the splash screen, it doesn't seem like it's doing this while showing the splash image.
Can I actaully make the app do something while showing the splash screen?
The best way would be to structure you application differently slightly differently.
Make your application display the Default.png when it starts it (ie. put a UIImageView onto screen), then start fetching your data.
Then either when you have fetched the data (or if you really must, once an NSTimer has expired, but it's a better user experience if you avoid a fixed time interval) change the view to be your real one.
Where you have got the idea that you need to call "sleep" while showing Default.png and there is nothing going on while this image is shown? Default.png is shown when OS is loading your app. You can not do anything during this time. In fact you have not got any control yet. It is handled by the OS. The idea behind this is to give user a feeling that app has loaded quickly, but actually your app is not completely loaded while Default.png is showing instead of a black screen by the OS.
You can manually add a view looking like your splashscreen after starting your app and handle the work in background. I would also add a hint to the user which indicates "loading data", because an app should start within 3 seconds.
If you read the Human Interface Guidlines, they're pretty clear that Default.png isn't intended to be a branding splash screen. It's meant to bring up a static "shell" of the initial page of UI so that the user experiences quick loading. So it's not at all designed or intended for what a lot of apps are using it for (including some of mine).
If you have your first screen that comes up be that image again, maybe with an activity spinner or status text on it, you can do whatever you need to do in the background of it, and then replace it with the first "real" screen of your app when you're done.
Generally all of the awakeFromNib calls in view controllers are done while the app is loading (ie has the splash screen up). When I put breakpoints in my apps at awakeFromNib calls, the breakpoints are hit when the splashscreen is up and the app is loading. So everything you do in
those calls will be processed while the loading screen is up.
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.
I an new in iphone application i want to put Nevigation controller after a splash screen so how can i put?Is there any way to put nevigationbar in my application without Splash Screen.
The recommended way to get a splash screen* is to use Default.png - this is the image that the iPhone puts on the screen while your app starts up - see the apple docs for more information.
And to get a basic navigation controller application running, the easiest way to see this is to make a new project - in Xcode choose File->New Project and then choose a Navigation Based Application - this will make a new project that has an empty Navigation Controller.
If you want to get the splash screen to stay on for longer, see the answers to this question
Hope that helps,
Sam
*Actually, the apple docs want you not to make a splash screen but to make a screenshot of the first page of your app so it appears to load faster - very few people do this, most make a splash screen and apple don't seem to mind too much.