Category: App development

While working on higher Impressions and views of the product page to increase the download number of my iOS app Cheat-sheets I started to deal with questions of ASO (App store optimization). App title, app description, key words are the things, that are comparably easy to set and to experiment with. But I faced a real problem with creating of good Screenshots / Images for the Cheat-sheets app.

I do realize, that App images in App store must be an eye catcher. They should attract ones attention and influence the user to push the download button. However, I’m not a designer and Photoshop is not my best friend. So I began to search for a free Screenshot generator tool. I though there might be much of them out there. But I was wrong.

First I tried Screenshot Maker at appinstitute.com. The screenshot generator has a modern intuitive interface. After uploading a screenshot it is possible to choose between particular templates, set the background color and the comment to the screenshot. Also, font and font size can be customized. Actually, it would be enough for my needs, if it worked properly. However, after exporting and downloading the generated images I was deeply disappointed. The font was set wrong and the text was on the wrong place. Beside this I noticed, that it is not possible to upload and to export images for iPad, although the option to upload iPad images is there… at least the button is displayed, which does not work. Above all is the absence of unicode support. Cheat-sheets is localized also in Russian. So, currently there is no way to make screenshots for it. Pity, very pity!

Next, I came across appscreenshot.me. It’s also a free screenshot generator. It has a pretty limited set of customization options and looks terrible 🙂 It’s not possible to design just a screenshot with a background. The uploaded image can be only embedded into iPhone frame. Screenshots for iPad cannot be designed with this generator at all. You cannot set colors as hexadecimal value, but only pick them from the color palette. For example, if you have 3 screenshots and one of them you would like update later, you’ll have to update all the 3 images, because otherwise the will look different. And at last unicode support… no unicode support, only latin letters! No commas, no spaces, no other symbols – only letters. How poor…

Unfortunately, I could not find any other free tools for creating App Store images so far. I also read about Photoshop templates and tools which automatically generate screenshots form Simulator. If I ever try these options, I’ll report about may experience in the next posts. For now I decided to try to achieve my goal with appinstitute.com. At least for iPhone images and at least for English and German languages.

 

Once I reported about my experience with HockeyApp a tracking tool for iOS, Android and Windows Apps. Today I tested the abilities of Google Analytics for iOS. Without going deep in details here is the overview of the evaluation results:

• There are SDKs only for iOS and Android. Tracking of the Windows Apps is not supported.
• Tracking of the fatal and non fatal exceptions is possible
• Screen tracking. If desired, the tracking method can be called for example in viewWillAppear. In the dashboard of Google Analytics there is the overview of the called Views.
• Support for custom events
• Real time screen end events tracking
• Dashboard of the App Analytics looks almost same as the dashboard for tracking websites
• If tracking private user data, be sure to learn about privacy policy and the proper use of the Google Analytics in your app

HockeyApp is a solution for collecting app crash reports, get feedback from users and distribute your betas. It can be integrated with apps for iOS, Android and Windows. This week I had an opportunity to evaluate it and now want to deal with my experience.

 

 

 

• Integration into an iOS app is really easy. Using Cocoapods it’s just one entry in your podfile:

  pod 'HockeySDK', :subspecs => ['AllFeaturesLib']

  Be sure to enable AllFeaturesLib if you need a feedback functionality.

• To start using HockeyApp in your project, you first need to register the app under your HockeyApp account. After doing that, you get an identifier for your app. This one you’ll need in your project
• With these lines of code you initialize HockeyApp and get it running:

  [[BITHockeyManager sharedHockeyManager] configureWithIdentifier:@"yourHockeyAppAppId";
  //you can add the following line before calling startManager to disable the In-App-Update feature
  [[BITHockeyManager sharedHockeyManager] setDisableUpdateManager:YES];
  // Do some additional configuration if needed here
  [[BITHockeyManager sharedHockeyManager] startManager];
  [[BITHockeyManager sharedHockeyManager].authenticator authenticateInstallation]; // This line is obsolete in the crash only builds
  

• From now on all crash reports appear  automatically at the backend side
• To integrate a feedback form  just build in two buttons into your app with corresponding handlers:

  - (IBAction)composeFeedbackAction:(id)sender
  {
      [[BITHockeyManager sharedHockeyManager].feedbackManager showFeedbackComposeView];
  }
  
  - (IBAction)feedbackListAction:(id)sender
  {
      [[BITHockeyManager sharedHockeyManager].feedbackManager showFeedbackListView];
  }
  

• At the backend the administrator can view user feedbacks and reply them. In the app the user gets automatically notified about new replies.
• Integration with Jenkins is also a matter of a few minutes. There is a plugin for uploading .ipa files to the HockeyApp. Depending on your needs, this Jenkins-plugin can release the app version immediately into a download area of the HockeyApp. The download area can be accessed then by beta-testers or if you define also by a public.

All in all HockeyApp is a pretty helpful tool. Maybe it’s not a suitable solution for individual developers because of the pricing model, but for companies it can be an attractive alternative.