We we wondering what are some ways developers have added a help function to their apps. What are some techniques people have used?
One way we were thinking of is to us UIWebView to display a HTML file with help instructions.
Thoughts appreciated.
I'm using UIWebView right now which pretty much contains all the help in a single page, along with some JQuery things to display popups, etc. But I like the way iCab Mobile (et al.) are doing things which is a sectioned UITableView with each row a separate topic or section within their overall help information (complete with icons...) then in their bundle they have each section in its own html file, organized by localization.
Another thing in my queue for the next release is to provide a dynamic "News" view. The rough idea is as follows... I have on my server a file or CGI where I can place small bits of news I'd like to push out to users. On startup, my app checks for network availability and if present, start a thread to see if anything has changed on the server since last updating the News data. If changes present, post an alert letting user know, and asking if they'd like to read it now. At that point, the latest news is already downloaded and cached, so they can simply read it later if they want, and I won't post anymore alerts until the server file changes again. (And one could add a preference/setting to disable these alerts.)
I'm thinking this would be a good way to let people know that some nasty bug is known and fixed and an update is sitting in the queue, solicit beta testers, promote upcoming features or other apps, etc. I can see where constant alerts everytime I've got something new to promote would get annoying, so having a setting to disable them means the user never has to read them unless they want to. Although some kind of override to warn of recently discovered/fixed bugs seems sensible.
FWIW, the author of Mover+/Mover has just started doing a similar thing, though I think Emanuele is perhaps only showing one Notelet at a time, whereas I envision a bit more of a history (shown in UIWebView) until I decide to age stuff off the bottom of the stack.
I'm using a scroll/page view to show several images containing small notes. Each image then tells the user about the more advanced functions on a specific part of the app.
In my opinion the help should only contain information that isn't a 100% relevant for the use of the application. It should be things the advanced user should use to make more use of the app. It should contain gold for the power users. The "basics" should be so obvious that no help would ever be needed. If that's not the case, I think, you've failed as a developer on the iPhone platform.
(Here's a screen shot from my demo app)
I'm currently creating a fairly complicated app. I'm thinking of doing help as a semi-transparent overlay - help in text form is hard to swallow for users; it's much more helpful to just point at stuff and say "this does that".
Related
Facebook recently announced the introduction of messenger codes which can be used to add new contacts and, more importantly, communicate directly with businesses and business pages (which is why I'm interested in it).
It took me ages to find it but on the bottom left of the messages tab on my Facebook page I have the option to download my code in three different sizes - clicking the disc will open a modal window where you can click the Download button and choose from 300, 600 or 1000px PNG file downloads.
NOTE: While they are PNG files the background is not transparent which seems like a bit of an oversight to me but hey ho that's what Photoshop is for I guess.
The problem is that while I can download my code I can't find any way to test it on printed materials (or even electronically at the moment!). The scanning feature doesn't seem to have been rolled out for me yet (I tried re-installing the Messenger app to see if I got a newer version but that didn't work) and nor for anyone I know (I'm in the UK). The codes are bespoke to Messenger so can't be scanned or tested using any other app.
I'm probably too far ahead of the game but is there any way I can test to see if my code scans correctly, or anywhere I can go to find out? I would like to use it on some promotional material which is likely to be long term materials that I don't want to have to update in the near future (several years, by which time it's likely these codes will be more commonplace).
I also need to know what the redundancy is like. For example the high redundancy QR codes I generate can have up to 30% of the code covered while still being usable, which is great for design purposes. I can't find any official documentation as yet for these codes at all, let alone what is required, what the spec. is etc.
I know the most likely option is 'sit and wait' but I really would rather not if possible. I've never been very patient...
Thanks
UPDATE: My Messenger app has now been updated so I can test, but I'm leaving this here in case anyone knows of another way to test perhaps? If someone doesn't have Messenger on their phone for example.
We're looking for a solution on how to best deal with the situation where multiple authors are working on the same page. If the first author pushes in the content, the second should have a way to merge it when he tries to publish. Launches appears to be a way to take care of this but it doesn't seem to be handling content merging. Is there any way an author can view the diff(and or do merge) of the content that might have been pushed by another author while they were working concurrently ?
Please help with any pointers.
Page modifications happen in real time to the underlying structure. They also happen at as small a level as possible.i.e. If you go into a text area and modify the text there, the text node is changed on the server, you aren't saving the entire page.
The only way that person A could interfere with what person B is doing is if they were working on the exact same area of the page. Which, honestly is a process issue. I say this because the answer to your question is that there is nothing out of the box to handle this type of scenario and if you are on 6.0 or higher and looking at the JCR3. JCR3 handles this far worse than the older version did. Last time I checked it didn't support nodes at all
Adding to what Bailey said, AEM OOB allow multiple users to edit same page in real time, though if multiple users are working on same node will be a reason of conflict. Such cases can be managed by defining a process like:
1. Take a lock of page and edit page or
2. Create versions of page and publish versions
I've searched the SurveyMonkey website, both help... and developer..., as well as the general net and stackoverflow, and can't find any examples of a SurveyMonkey survey being displayed in an in-page overlay (referred to by some as a "lightbox" or modal).
I think what I need to use is SurveyMonkey's Embed option, as opposed to Invitation or Survey Popups:
http://help.surveymonkey.com/articles/en_US/kb/How-do-I-embed-a-survey-or-have-it-open-in-a-popup-window-on-my-site
I'd like that overlay div to appear, close, etc upon the same triggers as a regular survey would/could, that is open if the user has no previous SurveyMonkey cookie, close when completed or closed by user, etc.
I can probably hack through a solution by forcing the survey into a custom overlay I build, but the behaviors would be more tricky, probably having to read the SurveyMonkey cookie, I suppose. Or, perhaps I could check for certain IDs of SurveyMonkey content that exists at various stages to pull off the behaviors (but I'll have to look at the generated code throughout the process to know if this is an option).
In short, it seems like someone else has surely run into this issue before and likely that a solution has already been created, at least partial to save me some time. I just can't find it.
Here are some things I found on the embed itself:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/blog/en/blog/2013/04/23/how-to-embed-your-survey-on-a-website/
https://www.surveymonkey.com/blog/en/blog/2013/04/16/video-tutorial-how-to-embed-your-survey-on-a-website/
Any and all help much appreciated, pointers/resources, example code, etc. Thanks!
I started looking into OwnCloud app development to add some capabilities I would like to my server. To me it seems like Apps can't modify anything like the Login page or User Management page. Is this the case?
I want to build a user registration app and would love to integrate it into the user management page (if not and it has to exist as its own app page not a big deal). The one big problem I see so far is not being able to add a "Register" link to the login page. I could just go in and add it to the source manually, but I would like to keep the App self contained so others can use it too.
If this is not possible to do in an App I may just need to modify the core application and then see if they will accept my feature addition in a pull request.
Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this for me. I don't want to waste my time trying to figure out how to do it with an App on the platform if it wont be doable.
After a lot of digging around I did figure out a way to do this.
In the App's app.php file, you can force a script to be loaded if the plugin is enabled:
$api->addScript('script_name'); // without .js
In that script jQuery can be used to add the elements to the page where you need them.
This was a good solution for me since I only needed to add a single button to the login page. I can see this being a bad idea if you want to make vast modifications. At that point you might as well just create a separate page that you have full control over.
I want to develop a GWT application. The application contains 8 modules and all the modules run in a single page.
I have links for all the 7 options on the top.
When the page loads I want only the home content to be loaded and displayed.
Only when the user clicks the menu options, the menu content should load.
Can anyone suggest the best way to achieve this.
This has been addressed in GWT 2.0... First you'll remove the separate entry points you have for each module - since they're all on the same page, you only need one entry point per page.
Then you can use the GWT.runAsync() method at each point that you feel can be a split... it automatically cuts up the code into chunks that are downloaded as and when necessary.
Look here for the docs.
AFAIK, lazily loaded (or pluggable) modules can't be done in GWT. Partly this is due to the way the GWT compiler works - it likes to import all the code that it is ever going to see and then optimises and prunes it as viciously as possible (to make the resulting JS files as small and lead as possible). If it doesn't have access to all the source code up front, it might make optimisations that will break the pluggable modules (especially since nothing in the "core" application may reference the classes that the lazily-loaded modules need to work properly - the GWT compiler would prune those "unused" classes in the core module).
This stackoverflow question from May 09 asks the same thing and has the same answer - it can't be done.
I searched high and low about six months ago for an answer to this problem, because I really wanted to do what I believe you're asking for. Never found a solution.
(I haven't used GWT 2.0 - it might have addressed the issue)
Thank you for your answer. You are right that the whole Javascript code gets downloaded.
But there must be a way like say on of module is View Profile. Only when the user clicks the view Profile link, the widgets related to displaying my profile needs to be created. is this not possible.