Categories
iphone programming

Touch interfaces: Help for new users (any app)

I’m writing an iPad game that’s designed to be self-evident and trivial to use.

Today, I made a re-usable “tell the user how many fingers to use” animation that would work well with any app. So, I decided to open-source it and stick it on github.

Screenshot from my current app (NB: you need to photo YOUR fingers – not mine! – if you want it to look like this)

Usage

Instructions are in the source code, but my intention is for this to be ULTRA SIMPLE for you to use, so here goes:

[code]

// Add this to the main UIViewController for your app – the one that displays
// when you’re ready for user interaction
-(void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
VFingersHelp* helpView = [[[VFingersHelp alloc] init] autorelease];
/** This will position the helpview in bottom-left corner. Bottom left/right corners are where
users prefer to "touch" (c.f. Disney’s style guide for toddlers).
While they’re watching the help, we don’t want them touching, so we deliberately place in bottom corner.
(feel free to move to top corner if you prefer).
NB: it’s easy to take a photo of your fingers and display at bottom of screen…
*/
helpView.autoresizingMask = UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleTopMargin | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleRightMargin;
helpView.center = CGPointMake( 0 + helpView.bounds.size.width/2.0, 2.0 + self.view.bounds.size.height – helpView.bounds.size.height + helpView.bounds.size.height/2.0);
[self.view addSubview:helpView];
}
[/code]