[ANN] Release 9.6.0 RC-1

[Ralph DiMola]

Monte/Mark thanks from me also! I am looking now at creating launch
storyboards. I will dig in and see what I can find.

Have a good evening.

Ralph DiMola
IT Director
Evergreen Information Services
rdimola at evergreeninfo.net


-----Original Message-----
From: use-livecode [mailto:use-livecode-bounces at lists.runrev.com] On Behalf
Of Mark Waddingham via use-livecode
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2020 9:03 AM
To: How to use LiveCode
Cc: Mark Waddingham
Subject: Re: [ANN] Release 9.6.0 RC-1

On 2020-05-12 13:45, Ralph DiMola via use-livecode wrote:
> Monte/LC Team,
> 
> I understand that you have limited resources. Could there be a 
> comprise here to share the workload? Instead of LC having to support 
> and change the iOS standalone options every time there is a new iOS 
> device format we(LC USERS) could pickup this pain. If there could be 2 
> options for splash screens this could work out for all.
> 1) Users can use the present 9.6 rc1 storyboard options.
> 2) Users could supply a file of resolutions and associated image names 
> for each specific resolution the user wanted to supply a custom image 
> for. If there is not a match then the images in the current 9.6 rc1 
> standalone splash screen implementation would be used.
> 
> This would put the splash screen implementation of current and new 
> screen specs squarely in hands of the LC user while retaining the 
> current seamless transition from splash to card 1. (if the LC user 
> wanted to put in the effort).

Unfortunately I'm not sure this is possible.

Apple are (soon) going to require all apps to use a launch storyboard -
specifying launch images is no longer viable if you want your app in the
AppStore.

When we started adding storyboards I asked Monte to see if there was a way
to allow current settings to work (i.e. build a storyboard which uses the
same images currently specified in the same way), and also offer a
simplified option (which is what has transpired in 9.6)...

Unfortunately it would seem that storyboards do not allow images to be
chosen based on screen size - just device type (iPhone vs iPad) and
generalized layout types (normal vs compact) - this means there appears to
be no way to replicate what you could do with simple launch images.

Apple HIG for this is a great ideal - but in reality (as far as I can
see) the only apps which can do that are those which use only iOS native
controls (the idea is that you have a launch storyboard which contains
skeleton controls from your first screen). Any app which relies on
customized controls (even intermingled with iOS ones) cannot achieve what
Apple suggests.

What we have wasn't something we just quickly did at the last minute there
was a concerted effort (as there always is) to preserve what we already had,
but we did not manage to find a way :(

That being said, it is possible that we have missed a storyboard capability
somewhere, so if someone can figure out how to create a launch storyboard
which *does* select images based on screen size (in a similar way to launch
images work), then I can be pretty confident we will be able to generalize
it to provide similar settings to the current ones in the S/B.

Currently the plan is to (in 9.7 hopefully!) to try and allow a custom
storyboard - so you can design one in Xcode and then provide it along with
the assets it needs to the standalone builder to build into your app. We
think we can do this (there are some technical details with referencing the
assets and such) but for the reason outlined above, this still won't bring
back the much simpler 'provide many launch images' 
capability.

Warmest Regards,

Mark.


--
Mark Waddingham ~ mark at livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
LiveCode: Everyone can create apps

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