can you use an image (previously created with Photoshop) to design your app ?
I mean connecting the psd objects to functions in app etc.
Kind of - you can create UIButtons, and set images as background. Then you can wire actions in your code to the button presses.
With the Briefs framework you can take a series of images and make a functional iPhone application from them by setting what happens when you tap on particular areas of the screen. While primarily intended for wireframes of applications, you could create a simple flashcard-style application from this.
Related
I'm trying to recreate the Camera.app buttons and interface from iOS in my own, custom camera application built on GPUFilter. Specifically talking about the Flash, Options, and front vs back camera button toggle that are across the top of the app:
Curious to know if these are built into Storyboards as UI objects or if there's another easy way to recreate these without totally reprogramming. I'm also interested in using the overlay table view that they use (in picture above) for options.
Thanks!
You can using AVCamCaptureManager and AVCamRecorder classes. Apple has a demo program build on its developer site here.
I have an iPhone application developed with iOS and I need to convert the application to universal so the app can appear in the iPad apps section of AppStore.
It just so simple as changing the Device section in my project to universal or I have to re develop the app, create new views, etc?
It depends strictly on your app, but generally speaking, yes, you will need to create new views.
I mean, even if you want to keep exactly the same UI, chances are that it will be more convenient to provide iPad specific versions of your xib files, or adapt the views you created programmatically. This is due to the fact that the iPad is not simply larger: it has got different ratio (3:4 vs. 2:3) and this changes things completely. You might try to play with autoresizing settings for your views and grouping views to make the same xib work as desired on both screens, but I suspect that this is not so easy except for very simple interfaces.
In any case, this is not the end of the story.
Actually, you will not want a "good" app for iPad to have the same UI as the iPhone version, since the larger screen space really screams for using different layout and organization of the information and controls.
As I said, it depends strongly on your app (with games being the strongest exception to the above rule), but in most cases, your app will greatly improve if you redesign it specifically for the iPad, rather than simply adapting it (so that it is not shown in the 1x/2x mode).
The simple answer is yes, just change the device family to Universal and you are done. But this would be pointless and you might even get rejected by Apple.
Take the time to actually create an app that takes advantage of the bigger screen. Use a split view controller and popovers or whatever is appropriate to your app.
Just making your main view bigger is a bad experience for your users.
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.
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
I am going to develop voip,iptv based application using QT on OS-WinXP and Platform-Atom processor for handheld device
As a application programmer point of view if I will not think about the drivers what are the other things I need to consider for this project? Like what should be the software layers in the handheld device?
I want to develop the touch screen GUI like Apple iPhone. All the widgets in QT now is window based. Can anybody suggest is there any QT widget gallery for touchscreen GUI like iPhone ?
Regarding the GUI elements in your second point, any or all of the Qt examples shown can have how they are drawn change through the use of QStyle subclasses. In addition to that, you can easily make a full-screen window, where no borders or window frames are shown. If you combine those two options (a full-screen window as background, with styled widgets on it), you can make a GUI that can appear just as nice as the iPhone GUI. The actual behavior in some widgets may be slightly different, but I'm assuming you know the basics of changing behavior via settings and subclassing.