IPad App Implementation Suggestions
I was tasked to create a magazine style app for iPad. Ideally, this would look a bit like the Zinio app: http://www.zinio.com/ipad/ . This application is a wrapper that allows you to select magazines (for example, read the first few pages) and select them to download. There seems to be some sort of overlay in the magazines that allows you to interact with some things (like click to watch a video). A few questions that come to mind:
- How can I deliver content to the user? In-app purchases are not really an option, as some content must be delivered free of charge. Can I download a package and make it available in the app?
- What format is suitable for showing the magazine? Sequential images, PDF, ebook?
- I need to have some form of interactivity. My guess is that I could have some form of lookup table that would include information as if the user had typed this page at these coordinates and then launched that item.
Has anyone dealt with similar problems?
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If you want to sell in-app magazine issues you have to use in-app purchase, apple won't accept anything else. However, the in-app purchase does not have a free purchase module, so you will probably need to build your app like this: a. It will ping a web service which will return all available logs (free and paid) in JSON or XML format. b. The application will parse and display this response. from. If a user tries to download a paid magazine, you do so through an in-app purchase, otherwise it is downloaded directly.
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It's a difficult question. Depends on what type of content you have, if it is mainly text, then it is better to use PDF, other images. Images can be heavy and harsh to handle and can lead to errors and crashes. (I warn you in advance).
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As I mentioned in #a, you can get the JSON information from the server and store it in a database / SQLITE DB or PLIST and do the related stuff. My preference would be PLIST.
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I agree mostly with Vibor's answer, but in terms of format, I would still recommend using PDFs unless the party responsible for updating the content is technical. If you want to embed all kinds of interactive materials (links, videos) - PDF file will be the easiest format for content creators who are not developers. Other options include a separate server-side content management that will sync with the app, but this requires more work (for you and the content creators alike) than just downloading PDFs.
I recently used this project to create a PDF magazine, although it was not free, it saved me tons of time and was worth it in my opinion - iPad Newsstand starter kit . I tried adding support for content rendering myself and ended up using a mature solution.
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