I am feeling increasingly frustrated by product websites that assume I already know what their product is. This seems to be especially prevalent on sites of tools meant for developers.
Please, don't make me have to guess by reading your tooltips, feature blurbs, and customer quotes like they are puzzle pieces to the question of "what the hell is this thing!"
At least PaintCode is kind enough to give an overview in their documentation.
I was pretty sure I knew what it was in 10 seconds, but they didn't tell me, so I had to guess. My guess was slightly off - I thought this was for making websites. It's better they tell me what their thing does rather than making me guess, even if it's an easy guess.
"Drawing Tools - Use built-in vector drawing tools to design controls, icons and other graphic elements."
And
"Code Generation - PaintCode instantly generates Objective-C or C# code from your drawings."
Seems obvious to me what it does. I literally have to do nothing besides open my eyes to get that information. Couple that with the screenshot, and the name, and the fact that the price is presented front and center, I can't help but wonder what information is missing?
I literally have to do nothing besides open my eyes to get that information.
What the other people are asking for is no different here. The core functionality of the product is presented in miniblurbs, which most other websites use as feature explanations instead. It's not hard to see why people didn't snap to those immediately as descriptions of the purpose of the product.
Also, as a neurophysiologist with an interest in attention and cognition, you literally had to do a lot more than just open your eyes to get that information.
> you literally had to do a lot more than just open your eyes to get that information.
If you are going to get that anal about the use of the word literally, you shouldn't abuse it yourself. And you complain about the quality of comments here.
You were schooling someone about how little effort it took to find information. I'm saying that there is more effort required than just opening your eyes - it's hardly abusing the word 'literally'. In any case, if you think my comment hinged on the word 'literally', you've misunderstood it.
And you complain about the quality of comments here.
You even italicised 'you', specifying me in particular. Are you going to call me anal again because I say I don't do that? Feel like backing up your claims? My comment history is there. You make it sound like a regular issue for me.
If you want me to complain about comments, how about this: "I don't like comments that simply make shit up out of thin air like that, because the author is just feeling sour and feels the need to strike out at something".
Very similar text appears if you hover over the bottom right yellow dot. Why the most important sentence on the page is hidden behind a mouse over is beyond me.
"Drawing Tools - Use built-in vector drawing tools to design controls, icons and other graphic elements."
And
"Code Generation - PaintCode instantly generates Objective-C or C# code from your drawings."
Seems obvious to me what it does. I literally have to do nothing besides open my eyes to get that information.
Couple that with the screenshot, and the name, and the fact that the price is presented front and center, I can't help but wonder what information is missing?
Paintcode is like a niche photoshop for iOS. You draw graphics inside the program and it gives you the custom drawing code in objective c.
The use case is if you decide to draw something custom in iOS like a specialized progress bar or a control that you wish to animate as you scroll your finger across the screen, you can make it much easier with this tool.
I met the authors in person > 1 year ago, when they were thinking about whether Java (Android) code generation would make sense. Would love to learn that they made it happen too.
I guess they (I would, too) assumed it was pretty obvious, but it is clearly not. (I don't mean this in a derogatory or a mean way). Just interesting. Related to the top comment here about not assuming that the visitors know what the app is about.
You hide it in the terms of service and hope that the person at the company buying it bypasses official procurement (i.e. buys the software with corp credit card).
Where I work the procurement organization will required that verbiage is removed.
When have you ever seen Apple as a reference customer? This was probably some unfortunate Apple employee using their corp email account for the receipt to be sent to. It could have even been a retail employee, which isn't as much as an endorsement as an engineer working on UIKit for example.
I bet Apple didn't give them permission, they never want their logo to be used for marketing purposes for any reason. There are no takeaway Apple-branded gadgets for instance (while I have tons of tshirt/pens/gadgets with logos/products of any technological company in existence), and many shopping malls in which Apple has a store can't show an Apple logo on the big ads panels outside.
I'd love to actually know how Apple are using this , especially in what apps.
All apps I've seen come from Apple tend to prefer rendering resources using images rather than code, even where you might assume something is done in code to start with, at least on iOS anyway.
I suspect you can just add them so long as you don't have an NDA. It might result in losing them as a customer if they had an expectation of privacy (for example, if it affected one of their acquisitions) - but that's usually done through an NDA.
OmniGroup found a way to effectively get upgrade pricing with the App Store, but it requires your app have two modes: Regular mode, and an in-app purchase to Pro mode. With that setup, you can offer discounts for the IAP to previous customers (basically, by having 2 IAPs that unlock the same functionality, but you only present one to the user). So your repeat customers still need to pay full price for the Regular edition but their Pro upgrade is cheap (or free).
Of course, most apps don't really split into Regular and Pro very well, so this solution won't work for a lot of people.
That's pretty bad way to alienate your loyal customers. They can still have users email them and issue download codes after paying through their website.
No they can't. The App Store very deliberately prevents that (because that would let you use the App Store for all its benefits, while completely bypassing the 30% cut). The only codes you get are a limited number of promotional codes. Sure, if you have 5 customers, you could give them codes, but if you have 500 you can't.
the last one is rarely used by Developers… 1Password is one, that allows you to buy it in the MAS, and use at least their Beta-Builds.
That many developers use the MAS as an excuse, for not providing any upgrade paths at all… is a very silly solution to a problem that many Developers/Companys face (to make permanent profit) at the cost of customer satisfaction.
I would KILL for something like this on Android. I know on Android it's not standard to layout UI in code but even just a better Android WYSIWYG layout xml designer would be wonderful. People have proven that it's possible to create gorgeous custom Android apps but it's definitely easier on iOS.
It looks like you can create vector-based custom controls and export them as Obj-C code. Custom controls are a real pain to layout on Android, so this would be great.
Seems like a candidate for an Apple acquisition and then integration in Xcode 6. A bit of a stretch, but such a move would align with the trend of baking interface builder, particle effect editors, etc. right into the IDE. (Designer <--> developer workflow considerations aside...)
Lighten up people. I understand the frustration, but OP is not ALL of those posts you're referring to. He's one guy that posted a link looking for feedback.
OP: I like this and think it has a nice, fresh look to it. Look forward to playing around with it. Thanks.
Actually, there's a performance hit when drawing directly (via [UIView drawRect:])
The point of PaintCode is to allow dynamic manipulation of an image. If you don't need a dynamic image, the best option is a .png; second option is drawing once to a UIImage.
Not very outstanding at all. I bought it last year and have used it a total of zero times (whose fault is that, mine, correct, but still, it stings that they have a shitty upgrade policy).
Well $99 for a developer tool is quite some impulse purchase. Can I gently suggest that your upset might be more a case of buyer's remorse than dissatisfaction with their upgrade policy?
If it helps, it does come up on things like MacHeist occasionally, and they have sales once in a while (there's one now, at $79.99, but I've seen it as low as $50).
Try and contact the authors, it's likely that they will give you at least a better upgrade price for version 2. Some companies also give out upgrades like that for free for people who bought previous version just before the launch.
It's on the Mac App Store, which doesn't permit this kind of thing.
It's not so bad: I'll try the free trial and if it fixes some of the problems I have with PaintCode 1, I'll pay for the upgrade. The app itself is a tool which helps me make money so it's not hard to justify.
I'm starting to think that an honorable and smart thing for developers to do is to run a sale a month or so before the release of a new paid version on the app store.
That would be approximately why I was able to get PaintCode v1 in a MacHeist bundle super cheap in January. Very worth it - if you're going to embrace the UI dynamics in iOS 7 and beyond, this is an incredibly efficient way to do it. An update of our cooking thermometer's app (http://supermechanical.com/range/app if you're curious) that's in review now will have a circular cooking timer widget - drag in a circle, see the wedge of a clock face you're selecting - and with PaintCode I just drew a wedge and designated the angle as a variable. Didn't have to think one bit about drawing arcs, and even better, it took away much of the penalty of tinkering with the look and feel of the interaction.
The animated bubbles make it very hard to read the text they connect to. Very distracting. But otherwise, the look of the site is absolutely gorgeous, and I'm really curious to see all the improvements.
PaintCode is meant to replace the need for images by giving you the equivalent code for basic images. Their initial claim to fame with version 1 was being "Retina ready," since the images are drawn in code instead of PNGs. It is a very good way to learn Quartz and CoreGraphics, but not necessarily the best way to learn ObjC.
I used PaintCode in a project I worked once, and it was a lot more work than I wanted for just asking my designer to give me an @2x image. If you work with designers who do vector art already, you're not going to gain much. The StyleKit class is slick, though, so I may revisit this once again.
I am wondering if PaintCode would allow my designer to draw up a complete UI - e.g. all screens so I could just use that.
What I do now is I get the designs in some sort of intermediary format, e.g. InVision or whatever, then I have to go and measure everything and all the pixel distances, then re-create it in Interface Builder. It's retarded.
The greatest benefit I can see with PaintCode is the ability to make parameterise-able images with expressions. Creating cool little dynamic vector images that can be driven through your code (gestures, accelerometer, etc) seems really nice.
Please, don't make me have to guess by reading your tooltips, feature blurbs, and customer quotes like they are puzzle pieces to the question of "what the hell is this thing!"
At least PaintCode is kind enough to give an overview in their documentation.