code that's always executed before app gets visible? - ios8

I would like to secure an app of mine with a lockscreen. Currently, it's shown in didBecomeActive, but it seems as if that's a little bit too late as the content is visible for a short time sometimes before the lockscreen is shown.
As the lockscreen is not always shown (e.g. only if the app was suspended for more that 30 seconds), I don't want to add it in applicationWillResignActive.
One method would be to start a timer then and add the lockscreen after 30 seconds in the background, but I don't like that solution, I would prefer a method like WILLbecomeActive- is there a way to achieve that?

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Getting memory leaks from Appcelerator Alloy app

I have an Alloy app. It has got 7 windows and opens at same time. When user close a opened window $.removeListener(); $.destroy(); codes runs at window close event. But I am getting memory leaks on Android device. %90 windows has got ListView, every window has got max 2 Listview. What is the right approach for multiple windows?
First of all, why you would want to open 7 windows at same time when user can only see max 1 window at a time.
It's dead simple, open only that window which user should see first, & create a link-flow to other window in previous window.
Can you think of any app on Play Store which does so, if you have, then please send me its link, I would really love to review it?
But if you mean to say that user will see all windows at same time in a scrolling behaviour or like paging, then go to Ti.UI.TabGroup
Are you 100% sure that your event listeners are being removed?
I don't know the function $.removeListener(); is this a custom function?
As a general rule I try and put as many of my event listeners into the xml, as these are automatically removed, and have a custom function destroyMe() that runs onClose which removes any other listeners that I may have used and $.destroy()
Ti.App.addEventListener is a killer too, make sure these are removed if you use them!
ps: i totally understand the 7 windows bit :-)

Make OS X Swift application run in the background

I'm making a Clock app in swift for OS X. I have a Timer in my Clock app that works kinda like the one in iOS. My problem is whenever I put my app into the background or minimize it the application kinda freezes or stops counting after being in the background for a minute or so. It starts working right where it left off when I bring it into the foreground. Is there anyway I can make my application run in the background? I've looked and haven't found anything that works.
Thanks to anyone who can help.
Are you relying on the timer to "count" the seconds? You should only use the timer to provoke an update of the display. When the timer fires, you should check the actual time and calculate what should be displayed based on that time, not how many times your timer has fired. It should never be the case that your app "starts working right where it left off" (if, by that, you mean that it shows the same time as when it was backgrounded and starts counting up from there again).
What's probably happening is that your app is being put into App Nap. Also see the Energy Efficiency Guide for Mac Apps.

writing fast launcher for windows

I'm writing WPF application
application targets all sort of windows and low performance computers
so I want to write launcher/splash screen for it which will be displayed before application loads
I'm not sure what language to use or what technology
I want it to be very fast and lightweight
can you suggest anything ?
Displaying a flash screen is as easy as popping up a dialog. If the dialog has the various resources such as bit maps already included then it is quite fast. However one issue that will determine this speed is how much other stuff is being initialized at application startup before the code is hit to display the dialog.
So one option would be to have a very simple application that does nothing more than display the flash screen and then start up the actual application. A simple Windows dialog application would do that. You would need to figure out how to synchronize the actual application finishing its initialization and the launching application stopping if you choose this route. There are several techniques for this and the most likely would be to use an interprocess mutex or perhaps just look for a file to be created.
For a point of sale I work with that is launched as part of turning on the terminal we ran into problems in which the application would start before some required system services such as database manager were up and running.
We have found that some environments require much more time than others so a registry variable makes it easy to tweak the delay in the field.
So as part of the application initialization what we did was that when the application starts up, it displays a dialog with a progress bar. The progress bar does a count up and we have a loop that does a one second sleep then increments the progress bar.
The number of seconds to wait is a registry setting for the application with a default value.
One problem we ran into was that when doing development and testing in a debugger, the default value was way too long for impatient programmers wanting to get started so we have condition compile so that if it is a debug compile, the delay is set to a couple of seconds. Otherwise the default is 10 seconds. However it can be changed with a change in the registry value.
See also this Stackoverflow about a launcher.
If you want something realy fast and lightweight, C would be nice.
If you dont want to learn C, you can also make a console application with .NET and C# it's fast too
Edit for comment: You can use a library like SDL wich is very fast and powerfull, and can draw images from a console application.

Is it possible to set up a first time splash screen?

Is it possible to use a certain image for a loading screen when it's the first time the app is ever opened, and then after that use a different image for the loading for all visits after that?
Basically I'm creating about 10 files (not large in size) when the app is first launched and I wanted to display a message to the user so they don't think that the app normally takes more than a second to load up. I know I can display a popup on the home screen, but I have an animation that fires when you go to the home screen and also I need those files created before the user arrives there. Any ideas? Or maybe a different view point that I didn't mention?
You can't change the splash screen. Maybe you should rethink how your initial 10 files are created, and take Paul's suggestion of showing a popup control while you do the work, or better yet, offloading it into the background? I guess it depends if your created files are required for something in the UI
--edit--
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I favour a background thread doing the work while you have a popup control displayed to the user. It would allow you to give the user feedback on what is actually going on. If your popup says something like "Preparing this application for its first run...", and then shows a progress bar that updates when each file is created, the user is getting feedback on exactly why the app is taking so long to load the first time. Otherwise they may think "This app is very slow, I wonder if there is a better one out there"
I'm not sure if this is what you were thinking when you said "Popup", but you could create a full screen Popup (in the System.Windows.Controls.Primitive sense of Popup) that completely covers your main UI so that the user can't see it.
Your temporary loading UI would be defined as a UserControl described in XAML/C# in the same way as a normal PhoneApplicationPage.
When your files are ready and you close the popup you should send a message to the View (i.e. .xaml.cs) of your main page that will cause the animation to be replayed with all contents visible.

How to show a splash screen during launch of a Cocoa app?

I would like to show the user a splash screen (a picture) while my Cocoa-based application launches. How would this be possible?
First thanks a lot. because my app running for a while time , so I want to show a splash before app running . Now if I show a window inside with a image , after that how to run the app? How to make sure that the app running after the splash showing ? How to do to get the sequence ?
First Thank you very much. And I show the window in applicationWillFinishLaunching method use orderFront,then hide it in applicationDidFinishLaunching: use orderOut,Now I found that the mainWindow not to show and the app terminate ,why ? How to do to resolute this question? Thanks!
Although Peter's answer is ultimately correct (you should rewrite your app to launch faster), sometimes that's not a practical option. For example loading code later in the application may take too long (e.g. a data acquisition application), forcing it to be loaded at startup. If you decide that you want to show a splash screen, the easiest way is to show it in the application delegate's applicationWillFinishLaunching: method. Create a splash window in your applications MainMenu.nib and add an outlet to your app delegate referencing that window. You can then put the window onscreen in applicationWillFinishLaunching: and hide it in applicationDidFinishLaunching:. Note that the main thread's NSRunLoop is not iterating during this time, so if you want to update the splash screen (with status, a progress bar, or such), you'll need to manage those redraw events yourself.
Again, think very hard about whether the long startup is necessary. If it is, showing a splash screen with a progess indicator is the minimum that you owe your users.
Why do you hate your users?
Seriously, don't do this. Don't make your users wait to use your app. Make your app launch quickly instead.
(And just in case you insist on an answer: Show a window with the image in it, then hide the window when you feel the user has waited long enough.)
Just put up a window with the image and close it when you are done with your launch initialization.
Barry's answer above does not seem to work for document-based apps. Showing a splash window within applicationWillFinishLaunching: interferes with the startup sequence of the app such that the document window isn't created. I've uploaded an example project here. In applicationWillFinishLaunching:, comment out [_splashWindow orderFront:self ] and the document window will come up.

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