Cygen Product Blog

Implementing ads into your app while at the same time trying not to degrade its appeal to customers can be a very fine line to walk. If your goal is to promote a paid version of your free app, this line becomes more distinct and easier to navigate. This mainly happens because the ads are directed at up-saling your paid version rather than having random unrelated ads appear in your app.

As an example, sdkIQ Lite is a free version of our popular iPhone SDK tutorial and reference app – sdkIQ for iPhone. sdkIQ Lite 1.0 was very subtle about how it promoted sdkIQ paid version. The first view of sdkIQ Lite, shown below, didn’t mentioned anything about upgrading to the full version. This was only mentioned in the info view, which is show below as well.

With the submission of sdkIQ Lite 1.1 to the app store, promoting upgrading to the paid version of sdkIQ is now front and center. However, rather than simply throwing an “Upgrade Now” button into the first view, the message of upgrading has been woven into the scenery, making it more than a subtle message, yet not overwhelming. You can see on the first view that a shadowed panel list some of the benefits for upgrading in a visually appealing display.

Below you can see both the first view and info view have been revised to promote sdkIQ paid version.

Additionally, related ads by Cygen are displayed, which also blend into the color theme. These additional ads promote sdkIQ, sdkiphonedeveloperforum.com (an independent spin off from Cygen) and most likely will feature dotnetIQ. This is only a handful of ads and all products have been developed by Cygen.

Blended nicely into your app, ads and upgrade promotions can get your message across without tuning out your customers. Additionally, nailing down the right upgrade message can get the kind of RIO you’re looking for.

We will be releasing several updates before the bigger 1.3 update. These smaller iterations will include many UI enhancements, including easier navigation and new visual cues. These enhancements should add to your overall developer productivity since sdkIQ will be working more in your favor to find the things you need.

Below is a preview of the new initial screen.

First draft of release notes:

New sdkIQ app icon

New background

Code snippets

No more confusion about video downloads

In the current version (1.3) of ‘When Did It Happen Facts’, the first view presented is the topic view. From here, it isn’t apparent what needs to be done next. Eventually, the user might discover they can flick up and down to move between topics. But how do you reach the timeline view, which is the first image show in iTunes? To reach the timeline, the user actually has to click the brown parchment paper surrounding the topic. Not very intuitive. Upon clicking the parchment paper, an info icon will display. Clicking it reveals the timeline. These steps are shown below.

Step 1: Topic view with info icon (appears after clicking parchment paper)

Step 2: Timeline view

To improve upon this design, the user needs an immediate cue on what to do next. Having the info icon always visible provides this cue. Not only does it draw the eye to its location initially, but it gets the user onto the timeline, which is intuitive enough that the user can drag to a new date. Even if the user doesn’t flick topics on the first view, the slider on the timeline view will allow them to reach new dates. The enhanced topic view is shown below.

You’ll also notice the info icon is moved to the right so it doesn’t pass through the middle of a new topic’s white space as it moves into view.

Another change is that the timeline view will open as the first view. I can’t tell what date a user may want to start on, which is the scenario when opening the app on the topic view. Starting the app on the timeline view will let the user quickly scroll to any date.

You’ll notice a new background is also present. It’s a leathery texture I’m experimenting with. This is part of an overall effort to enhance the UI of ‘When Did It Happens Facts’ to make it more visually appealing. Watch for the new design in version 1.4.

The following demonstration is a preview from sdkIQ for iPhone 1.3.

This demonstration provides an example of how to spice up your UITableView rows for a more polished look. In addition to seeing how easy it can be to design a nice graphic for your iPhone app, you get a start to finish implementation. The finished product is shown below.

Rather than sticking with stock components included in Interface Builder, this demonstration shows a simple technique that gives your app a more professional look. As a developer, it can be difficult to create nice looking graphics for your app. Hiring a designer can quickly exceed the budget. However, creating some nice looking graphics is certainly achievable as a beginning designer. In addition to picking up some new great skills, a polished off UI can lend more creditability to your app and provide an overall better user experience.

In the demo, Photoshop Elements is used, which is 80 bucks at adobe.com with a mail-in rebate. To get started, create a new image with these values:

• Width: 80 pixels
• Height: 40 pixels
• Background Contents: Transparent

Select a foreground color from the toolbar, as shown below:

Now select the gradient button, as shown below:

With the gradient selected, swipe from bottom to top on your image. This should produce a gradient color. Now choose File and “Save for Web”. You’ve just created the image we’ll use in our tableview. Let’s switch over to Xcode and implement the image.

In Xcode, we start by creating a navigation based application.

Once the application has been created, add the newly created image by right clicking the Resources folder then “Add” and “Existing Files”, as shown below:

The following code snippet creates two views. Both are then added to the cell’s view. Because the label, which is a view, is added as the last view, we need to ensure its background is transparent (clearColor). Otherwise, it will cover part or all (depending on the size we set) of our background image. Thinking about what this stack of layers will look like, below is a screenshot of the same scenario in Interface Builder:

From the screenshot, you can see the cell’s view owns the imageview and label. Although closer to the bottom, the label is actually top most to the user, hence the reason we need its background to clear.

Let’s take a look at the implementation in Xcode, which is all done in the UITableView delegate method cellForRowAtIndexPath:.

UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"gradientcolor.png"];
UIImageView *imageView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:image];
imageView.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleToFill;
cell.backgroundView = imageView;
[imageView release];

UILabel *label = [[UILabel alloc] init];
label.text = @"testing colors";
label.frame = cell.bounds;
label.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
label.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentCenter;
[cell addSubview:label];
return cell;

In the above snippet, we create an image object using the image we added to our app bundle. Next, we create a UIImageView object with the newly created image. The image view will be assigned to our cell’s background view. The backgroundView will retain an instance of the imageView. Therefore, we release our instance, as follows:

[imageView release];

If we had not released our instance, we’d have two instances of the imageView in memory and thus a memory leak. Moving on down in the code, we create an instance of a label. We set the label’s size to cover the entire cell. The label’s background is set to clear or transparent so it doesn’t hide the cell’s background image. Our assigned text is centered and finally, we add the label to the cell’s view, making it the top most view in the cell.

I you’ve found the demonstration practical and helpful. Please use the contact link from the home page at cygen.com if you have any questions.

Don’t stop at this tutorial! Find more practical iPhone SDK programming examples in sdkIQ for iPhone, now available in the iTunes App Store.

This update contains the following new features:

• Available in Spanish.
• Seven ‘Database’ topics added.
• Three ‘Foundations’ topics added.

As always, a free update to existing dotnetIQ users.

If you find yourself clicking a video link in a topic and nothing is happening, the reason is because the video hasn’t yet been downloaded. Topics with this icon next to their name as shown here:

contain video. Once you click the topic, you will see a link at the bottom of the topic content to watch the accompanying video. Usually the link text is “Watch video demo”. If you click the link and nothing happens, back out to the main topic list and go into “Video Demonstrations”. Anything that is gray hasn’t been downloaded yet. Just click any gray topic link and it will begin downloading that video. Once downloaded, you can watch the video there or go back into the related topic and watch it.

Sorry, I know it isn’t intuitive. However, version sdkIQ 1.3 and dotnetIQ 1.4 will address this issue by letting you know what’s going on:

The release of sdkIQ for iPhone 1.2 today introduces the “iPhone Programming 101″ Category, bringing a new set of tutorials with videos and a rewrite of existing tutorials. After requests for more details in the tutorials, we’ve gone back to the drawing board to include needed details, synchronization of text with video walk throughs plus download-able projects. The result is comprehensible tutorials that get right to the point.

Another common request was the ability to email code snippets to yourself. Not only can you email them, they come complete with working Xcode projects.

We hope everyone enjoys this update and am looking forward to the next one. Version 1.3 is already in development!

dotnetIQ 1.3, released today in the iTunes App Store, is now available in Spanish. Two Areas get new topics: Foundations and Databases. The larger emphasis is on database topics. Also added to this update is in app email. Send your support/programming related questions from the app without having to exit out.